PEDAGOGVES 
& PARENTS 



ELLA CALISTAWILSON 




Class^ 

Book 

GqcyrightH? 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



tv' $** 




PEDAGOGUES AID PARENTS 



BY 



ELLA CALISTA WILSON 




NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1904 



WIS 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Coyies Received 

NOV 18 ISHM 

Copyiifiin tfitry 



SS A. XXc. 



CUSS 

copy 



Kc. No; f 

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Copyright, 1904 

BY 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 



Published November, 1904 



I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
TO 

My dear Mother living, 

AND TO 

My equally dear and pedagogic Father 

long since passed on ; 

and to all other parents 

" Whose concern for their dear little ones makes them 

so irregularly bold that they dare consult their 

OWN REASON IN THE EDUCATION OF THEIR CHILDREN, 
RATHER THAN WHOLLY TO RELY UPON OLD CUSTOM." 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction . vii 

I. The Fountain-head 1 

II. Still Farther Back 8 

III. "New Education" in New England . . 29 

IV. School Curricula 45 

V. Points op View . . . . . .73 

VI. Individuality 89 

VII. Big Things .114 

VIII. The Method of Limits 137 

IX. " Natural Method" 155 

X. Arithmetic 173 

XI. Child Morality 204 

XII. Practical Morals 223 

XIII. The Children Themselves . » . . 246 

XIV. Pedagogues and Parents .... 265 



INTRODUCTION 

It is fitting that one should render a reason for 
sending forth another book on the subject of Edu- 
cation when so many excellent ones are already in 
the field. In this case the reason is a simple one; 
it is now, and ever has been, the custom, for trea- 
tises on Education to be written by Pedagogues and 
celebrities, for and among themselves. Scarce one 
of the really wise and worthy ones is an affair for 
the ordinary Parent. This little book is intended 
as a comment on Education and the present edu- 
cational situation, from the point of view of a 
Parent, and is, as they say in the colleges, pri- 
marily for Parents, but open to Pedagogues and 
others. 

It may be said that many Pedagogues are them- 
selves Parents. But, in matters educational, Peda- 
gogues are usually, and, in the case of fathers, 
almost surely, Pedagogues first and Parents sec- 
ondarily. Students of educational history cannot 
fail to observe that distinguished Pedagogues have 

vii 



Vlll INTRODUCTION 

not always been brilliant successes as Parents, or 
even Parents at all. Elizabeth Peabody, New Eng- 
land's beloved " Kindergarten Mother/' was a spin- 
ster; John Locke was a bachelor; so was Herbert 
Spencer; Froebel was childless. Of Pestalozzi's 
children history remains silent, or speaks in whis- 
pers. On the other hand, we know too much of 
the fate of Eonsseau's offspring. Writes Francis 
Bacon: 

" Surely a man shall see the noblest works and 
foundations have proceeded from childless men, 
which have sought to express the images of their 
minds, where those of their bodies have failed — so 
the care of posterity is most in them that have no 
posterity." 

We marvel that the greatness of great men is 
not more frequently transmitted to their children. 
John Stuart Mill tells us that the children of ener- 
getic parents frequently grow up unenergetic. One 
cannot help wondering if over-abounding nervous 
force is not too often possessed at the expense, pre- 
natal and post-natal, of offspring. As for Peda- 
gogues, they nearly always live at high nervous 
tension. An alert educator, if he finds time at all 
to attend to the education of his own children, is 
seldom sufficiently patient and reposeful to sit 



INTRODUCTION IX 

quietly by and see them enjoy the large amount of 
let-alone-ness which Nature plainly indicates to be 
their birthright. Miss Peabody had in mind this 
same thought when she once said to me, " It really 
seems to take one order of mind to discover edu- 
cational theories, and quite a different one to apply 
them." 

Be all that as it may, there will yet, for a long 
time to come, continue to exist, two distinct classes 
in the rearing of children — Pedagogues and Parents. 
But Pedagogues and other savants dwell apart with 
the Muses on Parnassus, and have thoughts and 
methods of thinking peculiarly their own. Thus it 
results that they have also a language of their own. 
Their ideas come down to us clothed in this lan- 
guage Parnassian, and not in the homely speech of 
the plains where we Parents dwell. Their works, 
therefore, although in substance containing what 
should be most nourishing soul-food for Parents, 
are not appetising to them. An example or two 
will make plain what I mean. It is in the following 
words that a magazine for parents and teachers 
enlightens its readers concerning the interest- 
ing " Culture Epochs " of the race and the indi- 
vidual: 

"This, the so-called theory of the Culture 



X INTRODUCTION 

Epochs, is an application to the psychical develop- 
ment of the child of the theory of recapitulation 
which the doctrine of Evolution regards as estab- 
lished for the physical development of the indi- 
vidual." 

This is solid educational food. It is, doubtless, 
a portion easily digested and assimilated by stu- 
dents. The idea contained in it is simple 
enough, too; but would even the well-educated 
among the great mass of parents and teachers be 
likely to be tempted by it in that form? 

Once upon a time there was appointed, among 
the Pedagogues of our day, a committee to confer 
and report upon the question as to what are the 
most desirable subjects to be taught in our schools, 
and the relative amount of time which may be 
profitably devoted to each; in other words, to devise 
a course of studies for our public schools. The 
story of that committee, and the course of study 
which they devised, will be told in our chapter on 
" School Curricula." At present we are only to con- 
cern ourselves with the fact that this important 
committee was made up solely of Pedagogues. 
Does it not seem an infinite pity that the parental 
view should not have been represented in discussing 
a matter of so much import to the well-being of 



INTRODUCTION XI 

our children? We Parents have not yet, we do 
readily acknowledge, in the mass of us, education 
and training to render us well fitted for such work. 
Nevertheless, it does seem that at least one layman, 
one Parent as such, should have been looked up 
among us and appointed to serve on that committee. 
If our children come out to our discredit, it is the 
Parents, not the long-forgotten teachers, who are 
held responsible. "Is this your son, my Lord?" 
not, "was this your pupil?" 

Moreover, who should have been looking with 
interest to the publication of that report? Parents, 
too, as well as so-called educators. And some of 
us were, indeed, eagerly interested. But when, at 
last, the pamphlet came forth, thoughtful and com- 
plete beyond criticism, it was uncompromisingly an 
affair solely among Pedagogues. There was not a 
single sop to us Parents in the whole long extent 
of it. Nor was it much more fitted to be profit or 
enjoyment for our teachers, who are but our sisters 
and daughters, and are not of the savants of Par- 
nassus. 

A little after the publication of this report, I 
was riding on a trolley-car out into one of the 
beautiful suburbs of Boston, on a day when time 
and place and weather should have kept every soul 



Xll INTRODUCTION 

at peace with itself. On the seat before me, a 
sweet-faced young woman, with worried brow, was 
poring over a yellow-covered pamphlet. A little 
pardonable craning of the neck convinced me of 
what I had already guessed; my neighbour was a 
young teacher wrestling conscientiously with that 
report on " Correlation of Studies," page 6. Im- 
mediately on arriving at home I looked up my 
copy and turned to page 6. My eye fell upon the 
following passage: 

"The psychological ideal which has prevailed to 
a large extent in education has in the old phrenol- 
ogy, and in the recent studies in physiological psy- 
chology, sometimes given place to a biological ideal. 
Instead of the view of mind as made up of faculties 
like will, intellect, imagination, and emotion, con- 
ceived to be all necessary to the soul if developed 
in harmony with one another, the concept of nerves 
or brain-tracts is used as the ultimate regulative 
principle to determine the selection and arrange- 
ment of studies." 

Poor, baffled, earnest girl teacher! Could all that 
help her the least bit in her endeavours to cooper- 
ate with the " ultimate regulative principle " at the 
basis of her work? 

Again: a bright, enthusiastic young teacher of 



INTRODUCTION Xlll 

Maine, a neighbour of ours in this town where we 
are spending the summer, showed me the text-book 
from which she and her fellow-teachers are study- 
ing Pedagogy under their superintendent. She 
wore a woful face. 

"I hate the book," she said. "I suppose the 
ideas are all right, but the language of it! These 
are not at all the words we use; I don't understand 
half of them." 

It takes a long apprenticeship to acquire the art 
of being inspired by ideas expressed in Parnassian 
English, even although one may know the literal 
meaning of every word. The text-book used by 
this class gives definitions of all the important 
duties and departments of teaching; is, indeed, a 
fine topical analysis of pedagogy in pedagogical 
language. I give you a few examples. Teaching 
is once defined " in its own terms "; then we have 
the following paragraph, its definition "in terms 
of learning acts ": 

"Learning Acts: — Stated explicitly in terms of 
learning acts, the teaching acts are: (1) Causing 
the formation of clear individual percepts and con- 
cepts; (2) Causing the formation from these of 
correct general concepts and conclusions, together 
with a quickening and strengthening of motives; 



XIV INTRODUCTION 

(3) Causing an apt and skilful application of the 
knowledge and power thus gained to the demands 
of practical life, or to the increase of needful knowl- 
edge." 

Now I appeal to you: is it not disheartening to 
a young district school-teacher, with some forty or 
fifty pupils of almost as many grades, to have to he 
taught to stop and analyse her faithfulness in that 
fashion, and in language of that sort? And to go 
to class and recite it! 

One other example from this text-book; — the 
teachers are instructed that curriculum-making "is 
a subject in management rather than methodology." 
And the lesson goes on, — 

"It is intended here to take the principal and 
typical subjects that are common to school cur- 
ricula, as they now exist, and discuss briefly their 
relative values as acquisitional, assimilational, and 
expressional, preliminary to a treatment of the 
methodology of each." 

In fulfilment of this promise the definition of 
"acquisition" is as follows: "It comes near 
enough to say that, as here used, acquisition is the 
operation that involves the activity of the senses 
and memory, and of judgment in its elementary 
function of forming concrete concepts "! 



INTRODUCTION XV 

Much marvelling, I asked a successful teacher 
friend of mine what she would define " acquisition " 
to mean, when she spoke of the acquisition of 
knowledge. "Why, it means the getting of knowl- 
edge," she answered, in surprise at the question; 
and I pondered upon the simplicity of our language 
of the plains, as compared with that of Parnassus. 
"Interest," in this marvellous book, is defined as 
a "summation of feeling." 

But to return to our troubled teacher who is 
studying the book. This young woman takes an 
individual interest in— perhaps I should say, "has 
a summation of feeling," for — each pupil in her 
large school. She even came over the other day 
to see if our lad had any outgrown clothing which 
would do for a little pupil of hers who, she was 
sure, " would have more self-respect if he had whole 
clothes." Now that young woman is going up to 
Bangor in' January to learn stenography, and I 
cannot help feeling that she would not have been 
lost to our teaching force if her weekly classes in 
Pedagogy had been made sources of inspiration and 
comradeship, instead of weariness and a long, bur- 
densome lesson to learn. Moreover, I cannot help 
asking myself if those classes would not have been 
far more likely to be encouraging and inspiring if 



XVI INTRODUCTION 

Parents were hand in hand, as they should be, in 
the management — or is it methodology — of school 
affairs, and the training of teachers. 

Once, on one of the timid little visits which I 
occasionally make to Parnassus, I expostulated on 
this custom of handicapping simple, every-day 
ideas, by sending them forth for the use of teachers 
so heavy-laden with ponderous language. I re- 
ceived the mildly reproachful reply: 

"Why, scientists must express themselves in 
terms of their own sciences; they cannot be 
bothered by the syncretic circumlocutions and re- 
dundancies of the uneducated." 

"True! true!" I exclaimed appeasingly, "but 
pray, might there not be appointed a commission 
to translate the best of the Parnassian works into 
the homely, every-day vernacular of the plains, lest 
their really helpful and elevating thoughts be lost 
to us by the simple accident of their being in a 
different dialect? — even as the beautiful tales of 
Chaucer might have been lost to the mass of us, 
had they not been translated from old into modern 
English." 

Ever since that conversation my mind has again 
and again occupied itself with visions of interlinear, 
parallel-column, or, better still, free, translations 



INTRODUCTION XV11 

of the best of these works, for the use of Parents. 
Such an achievement in our behalf would be a 
great boon, as many of us would like to educate our- 
selves to the point of co-operating with Pedagogues 
on a subject which is even nearer to our hearts than 
to theirs. 

The point of view of the Parent is, indeed, a 
vastly different one from that of the Pedagogue. 
Each of us likes to make his calling a success. It 
is no disparagement to the Pedagogue or school- 
teacher that his ambition is almost invariably for 
a successful school; while a Parent's ambition is 
always for the success of the individual pupil — his 
own particular boy or girl. 

The Pedagogue studies the laws of childhood; 
the Parent the temperament and needs of his par- 
ticular child. The school-teacher advances the 
children in regiment, lock-step; the Parent in their 
natural gait, in their stragglings and self-directed 
sprawlings. Which deals with the real children? 
The motive, too, is different. The Pedagogue is 
influenced by high moral purpose; the Parent by 
passionate love. Neither is sufficient, yet who does 
not know how far love transcends all other springs 
of judgment and action? "Love is a celestial 
torch, flooding us with light in our holy work of 



XV111 INTRODUCTION 

clearing for loved ones, the highroads and bypaths 
to ideals." 

Parents should feel that to them alone is given 
the supreme and divine responsibility of the culture 
of their children. Educators and others can be 
valuable assistants, but they are rightly the assist- 
ants, not the principals. Every chapter in this book 
is penned with earnest desire to do a small share 
in hastening the day when the wisdom of the Parent 
shall be welcomed in the councils of the Peda- 
gogues. Only by the union of parental love, and 
pedagogic zeal and high purpose, can the present 
new, widespread interest in Education attain to 
fullest blossoming and fragrance. 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 
I 

THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 

(Emile) 

" Who, then, shall educate my child ? I have already told 
you,— yourself . "—Rousseau. 

As they came to him one after another, Jean 
Jacques Kousseau consigned his children to the 
care of the great Foundling Hospital of Paris, uni- 
versal foster-mother of orphans and undesired chil- 
dren; consigned them to namelessness and oblivion. 
Thus only might he obtain peace and repose to 
bring forth and rear Emile, the child of his brain; 
the renowned Emile, whose mission was to give 
world-wide inspiration to parents in the bringing 
up of their children. In vain does the lamenting 
Therese plead for the keeping of one, just one of 
their children, to solace the cravings of her mother- 
heart. Jean Jacques will not be able to rightly 
educate the child of his imagination with the dis- 



2 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

turbance of even one offspring of his body " puking 
and puling" under his roof. 

Whatever the fate of Rousseau's actual children, 
the vivid story of the childhood of his fancy-born 
Emile was to overturn all existing ideas on the sub- 
ject of Education. Red-hot from his revolutionary 
pen, it was a firebrand in the educational and family 
world of Europe. It kindled men and women not 
only to emotion, but to action. 

Education had long been at a wearisome, monoto- 
nous, life-killing standstill. The evangel of Emile 
persuaded even the elegant ladies of society to forget 
their lapdogs, and put themselves to the task of 
personally conducting the education of their chil- 
dren. It became the fad and fashion of society, as 
well as the earnest aspiration of educators, to be- 
come tutor and guide to some small child who could 
play for them the role of an Emile. 

Here is, indeed, a book written for Parents. In 
language simple, fervent, direct, passionate, it ad- 
dresses itself to any one, Parent or Pedagogue, who 
wishes to develop a child to the full stature of a 
man. Were I a parent newly coming into the 
knowledge that it is the first duty of parents to 
secure for their children a full, free development of 
their possibilities and powers, and wished to land 



THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 6 

myself in the promptest way among those in the 
van of Education to-day, I would, first of all, devour 
this book, Emile. Payne styles it "The greatest 
educational classic in the world." It is the head- 
water of the whole system of later streams and 
torrents of "New Education" theories, "Natural 
Methods," "Nature's Method of learning all 
things," methods for acquiring " Complete mastery 
of a foreign language in six weeks," etc., etc. 

If you do but once get into your understanding, 
the simple, fascinating principles of this book, you 
will scarce ever again meet with new ideas on the 
subject of Education; you will meet only varieties 
and manipulations of these. Do not fear the pas- 
sion of it; nor the inconsistencies; nor stop to exam- 
ine into the ridiculousnesses of it. Get into the on- 
rushing current of it, and steam on and on; turn 
not to right or to left to pick up the odd things in 
the stream. Eeturn later for flotsam and jetsam. 

Possibly this book made its impression, not in 
spite of having its pearls discovered in all sorts of 
impossible shells, but by the very fact of it. The 
" New School " will tell you that you cannot know 
white without knowing black; beauty except along- 
side of ugliness; that virtue is not virtue until it 
has known and resisted evil; in a word, that we get 



4 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

our knowledge through contrasts. So read steadily 
on and catch the spirit, even more than the often 
contradictory principles. After Emile read any- 
thing which will help you educate your children; but 
first read Emile — at all events a good deal of it. 
Historians say that the French Eevolution was 
fought with the sword in the right hand, and the 
works of this " Censor of Civilisation " in the other, 
and that the left hand was the one more feared. 
We do not fear Rousseau. We are a democracy. 

It goes without saying that, while Emile may be 
called the head-water of the " New Education " 
system, this head-water had many feeding-springs. 
All the intuitively wise and gentle, from ancient 
child-lovers down to "the great John Locke," con- 
tributed to the full-flooding of this fountain-head 
of modern educational ideas and ideals. 

Is there, then, so vast a difference between the 
New and the Old in Education? Let us see a little. 
First, we must bear in mind that the Old is of the 
spirit of total-depravity theory of human nature, 
and of the natural state of alienation between God 
and Man; and that the New is filled with the in- 
spiration which comes of the belief that Man is the 
noblest work of God, is made in his image, and 
has within him the promise of ultimately develop- 



THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 

ing into a being worthy to be called a Son of God. 
" Spare the rod and spoil the child/' exhorts the 
Old; " Spoil the rod and spare the child," retorts 
the New. 

"Keceive the child at six and load him like an 
ox," enjoins the Talmud; and not only our Puritan, 
John Milton, but most master-spirits of the past 
keep full pace with the Hebrew, as we shall show 
in our chapter on " School Curricula." 

Montaigne, writing of the gentleness of his 
father's method of educating him, tells how that 
fond parent avoided the violence of a sudden awak- 
ening in the morning, " which doth greatly trouble 
and distemper their brains." "He would every 
morning cause me to be awakened by the sound of 
some instrument, and I was never without a servant 
who to that purpose attended upon me." 

Compare this with the more usual old-time cus- 
tom of giving such orders as, to " truly belash him 
till he will amend," illustrated by the twenty-three 
whippings received by poor little Martin Luther in 
one day! 

The old-time idea was that the more a child was 
kept at his book, and whipped up to it, the greater 
scholar he would become; that that, indeed, was the 
surest way of compelling his salvation. One gets 



6 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

a fair idea of the wide gulf between the Old and 
the New by reminding himself of the beautiful, 
attractively illustrated, over-abundant juvenile lit- 
erature of to-day, and then recalling to mind that in 
the olden days there was seldom any children's lit- 
erature at all. The Book of Proverbs was for gen- 
erations the book from which juvenile Scotland was 
taught to read. John Buskin learned to read by be- 
ginning at the first chapter of the Bible, reading 
it through to the end, hard words, genealogies and 
all, and then immediately beginning it over again. 
We are all familiar with our own New England 
Primer, with its Bible-texts and warnings, and its 
dreadful little wood-cuts. At one time it was the 
regular thing to begin a boy's education with the 
reading of Latin. Why not? All the great works 
were in Latin. Moreover, the school reading, in 
Latin or in English, was arranged for practical in- 
struction as well as for learning to read, and was 
often diversified by awful warnings concerning the 
horrors of hell and the counter-attractions of harp- 
playing, psalm-singing heaven. They did, indeed, 
put the big end of the wedge in first, those sturdy 
educators of the past! That it is safe to treat 
children rationally, or even humanly and humanely 
in the schools, is an idea of very recent times. If 



THE FOUNTAIN-HEAD 7 

the gods had the habit, as the ancients believed 
they had, of passing their leisure in observing the 
doings of mortals, they must have felt that they 
had a continuous performance for their edification, 
in the tragi-comic drama presented by the conflict 
of these rival lines of thought and feeling all through 
the Middle Ages, and even down to the present 
time. Munroe, in his History of Education, writes: 

" The sins committed in the name of liberty pale 
before those committed under the guise of educa- 
tion. The school world was filled, in the old days, 
with the wails of children, tortured in body and 
mind, with the strife of barbarous art contending 
with outraged Nature; with the wrecks of fine souls 
ruined by mal-education." 

Is it not an infinite pity that victims could not 
have been furnished for these wranglings and ex- 
perimentations, other than tender, helpless little 
children? We have banished " tortures of the body " 
from our schools, also "tortures of the mind," — 
somewhat. Yet have we not still about us too 
many "wrecks of fine souls ruined by mal-educa- 
tion"? — ruined by over-education, under-education, 
and by education against the grain? 



II 

STILL FARTHER BACK 

" We play the fools with the times, and the spirits of the 
wise sit in the clouds and mock us." — Shakespeare. 

No thought is wholly our own until we are 
familiar with the biography of it. It is profitable 
for us Parents, as well as for so-called educators, to 
look over the educational field as far back as we 
may. Putting aside the temptation to return to 
classical antiquity, let us take a brief glance at the 
beginnings of Modern Education. 

"At the mid-point between ancient and modern 
history stands the commanding figure of Charles 
the Great/' writes West, one of Alcuin's biog- 
raphers, "finisher of the old order of things and 
beginner of the new." Likewise, at the mid-point 
between the old and the new in education,, stands 
Charles's famous "Palace School," that "Pioneer 
school for the nobles of the realm," and the two 
more humble schools for the clergy and the peas- 
antry. Modern Education, we may, indeed, fancy, 

8 



STILL FARTHER BACK 9 

began about the year 800 with this "University 
of Aachen/' which by stretch of courtesy may be 
called the first university of France, or of Germany, 
as you please. The august and puissant emperor, 
Charlemagne, having got the whip hand of all his 
enemies, had determined that his capital should 
become a centre of learning. We read how he en- 
ticed hither Alcuin, the foremost of English 
scholars, to establish a school in his palace. We 
hear this Palace School spoken of in terms of rever- 
ence and awe. We read Charlemagne's imposing 
edict which he sent out all over Frankland, and we 
picture to ourselves, — well, a Harvard or a Yale 
University. This edict has been called the first 
general charter of education for the Middle Ages. 

"It is our wish," runs this famous edict, "that 
you may be what it behooves the soldiers of the 
Church to be — religious in heart, learned in dis- 
course, pure in act, eloquent in speech; so that all 
who approach your house in order to invoke the 
Divine Master, or to behold the excellence of the 
religious life, may be edified in beholding you, and 
instructed in hearing you discourse or chant, and 
may return home rendering thanks to God most 
High." 

What more than that can our colleges of to-day 



10 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

expect of their sons? It is interesting to get a 
glimpse of how they attempted to fulfil these high 
ideals in this long-ago university. "Let it be re- 
membered/' writes West, "that the tall, blue-eyed 
barbarians, whom Alcuin was aiming to civilise, 
were but little children when it came to school 
learning. . . . Even his master Charles had to toil 
painfully to bend his fingers, stiffened with long use 
of the sword, to the clerkly task of writing, and 
confessed that he acquired the art with great diffi- 
culty." West quotes for us interesting bits from 
the dialogues written by Alcuin for his pupils. 
This one, on " Ehetoric and the Virtues," was com- 
posed in response to a request from the King: 

" What art thou? " asks Alcuin, and after Charles 
answers, "I am a man" (homo, for of course this 
is all in Latin), the dialogue goes on as follows: 

Alcuin. See how thou hast shut me in. 

Charles. How so? 

Alcuin. If thou sayest I am not the same as 
thou, and that I am a man, it follows that I am not 
a man. 

Charles. It does. 

Alcuin. But how many syllables has Homo? 

Charles. Two. 

Alcuin, Then art thou those two syllables? 



STILL FARTHER BACK 11 

Charles. Surely not; but why dost thou reason 
thus? 

Alcuin. That thou mayest understand sophis- 
tical craft and see how thou canst be forced to a 
conclusion." 

A similar dialogue was written for two of Alcuin's 
young pupils who had " but lately rushed upon the 
thorny thickets of grammatical density." The fol- 
lowing was composed for the sixteen-year-old Prince 
Pepin: 

" The Disputation of Pepin, the Most Noble and 
Eoyal Youth, with Albinus, the Scholastic. 

Pepin. What is writing? 

Alcuin. The guardian of history. 

Pepin. What is language? 

Alcuin. The betrayer of the soul. 

Pepin. What generates language? 

Alcuin. The tongue. 

Pepin. What is the tongue? 

Alcuin. The whip of the air. 

Pepin. What is air? 

Alcuin. The guardian of life. 

Pepin. What is life? 

Alcuin. The joy of the happy; the expectation 
of death. 

Pepin. What is death? 



12 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Alcuin. An inevitable event: an uncertain jour- 
ney; tears for the living; the probation of wills* the 
stealer of men. 

Pepin. What is man? 

Alcuin. The slave of death; a passing traveller; 
a stranger in his place." 

Here is one on what we should now call Physics: 

"What is snow? 

Dry water. 

What is winter? 

The exile of summer. 

What is spring? 

The painter of the earth. 

What is autumn? 

The barn of the year." 

"After more of the same sort, the dialogue 
rapidly runs into puzzles and then closes." 

There are problems for "whetting the wit of 
youth "; for instance, a king is " gathering an army 
in geometric progression; one man in the first town, 
two in the second, four in the third, eight in the 
fourth, and so on through thirty towns. The total 
is 1,973,748,823 soldiers, an army which might well 
amuse the imperial pupil! " 

No rule for geometric progression! Simple 
counting up and adding! And the only figures used 



STILL FARTHER BACK 13 

are the Koman numerals! Try it yourself! In- 
teresting it surely is, but it cannot fail to summon 
up a smile of amusement and wonder when we re- 
gard it as the serious "content" of a university 
course! 

Time spent among these crude beginnings may 
not at first seem well spent for us Parents of to-day. 
But psychologists are telling us that the child must 
go through the same " Culture Epochs " (so clearly 
defined in our Introduction), as the race has gone 
through. With that thought in our minds, is it 
not instructive, even for Parents, to throw a search- 
light over educational beginnings? Does it not at 
least tend to make us patient and submissive over 
the elementary ways of our children? For, surely, 
if the greatest ruler of his time, in council with the 
wise men of his realm, no farther back than a 
thousand years, aimed to establish a " more excellent 
Athens " on such mental diet as that with which 
Alcuin satisfied Charlemagne and the pupils of his 
court schools, then are we not encouraged to regard 
with sympathy and patience the exceedingly rudi- 
mentary ways of our little barbarians, and their in- 
tense interest in trivialities? I well remember how, 
years ago, we youngsters of the Boston High School 
used to wage hot warfare over the old school-men's 



14 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

questions: "Could God make two mountains with- 
out a valley between? " " Could he locate a million 
angels on the point of a needle ? " " Could he have 
in his universe two irresistible forces?" 

Vital questions these! If he could not do these 
things where was his omnipotence? And if he 
could — well, it was plain that he couldn't, for they 
couldn't be done! And yet? And so the cycle of 
reasoning began all over again. Childish? Cer- 
tainly; we were passing through the Charlemagne 
age, were we not? My dear old mother has often 
told me that such littlenesses were quite necessary 
to the right development of children's minds. It has 
evidently been necessary for the Eace as well! How 
those old Christian theologians of the fourth cen- 
tury, in their fierce factions, waged triangular war- 
fare on the ecclesiastical battle-field, the Homo- 
ousians maintaining that Christ was of the same 
substance as the Father, the Homoiousians that he 
was of similar substance as the Father, and the 
Heteroousians that he was of a different substance 
from the Father! 

By all means let us allow our children to pass 
comfortably through as many of the " Culture 
Epochs " as is necessary for their full development. 
With love and tenderness all about thenx, and 



STILL FARTHER BACK 15 

schools and churches, and modern civilisation gen- 
erally, we do not see how they can be expected to 
get at things exactly as poor, unassisted Human 
Eace had to do it; nevertheless, it is a comfort to 
have in reserve this theory, which shall reassure 
us, in their seasons of mental and moral lapses. We 
can say to ourselves, " This is but the tooth-and- 
claw age; they'll soon be out of it." Or, " This is 
but the Dark Age of self-centred animalism; we 
have only to hopefully hurry them on to the Modern 
Age of intellect and ethics," recalling the fact that 
in the earliest stages, self-preservation was the first 
law of Nature, and that the most vigorous in self- 
protection had a promise in him beyond his fellows. 
And, — mournfully I admit it, — I have observed 
again and again, concerning this law, and the law 
of "Natural Selection," that things often do seem 
to come out, as an old nurse of mine used to say, 
"'cordin' tew." Some little lawless, but vigorous 
savage of a boy, seemingly all animal, develops, for 
our discouragement, into a fine doctor or lawyer, or 
even minister of the Gospel, while his " good," more 
restrained comrade winds up — a nonentity, or 
worse. 

We hear a good deal about mental precocity. 
Moral precocity is as dangerous a disease in child- 



16 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

hood as mental precocity. No precocity, indeed, is 
wholly to be trusted. Children ought not to know 
enough to be too good. When the ten-year-old son 
of a friend of ours announced to us that he meant 
to be a minister we were pleased. But when, on 
being asked his reason for that decision, he replied 
with fervour, "Because I love religion," I felt that 
there was no hope for him in this world unless 
some gang of bad boys — of the T. B. Aldrich 
calibre, be it understood — should get hold of him 
and straighten him out into healthy boyhood. A 
dirty boy lying on his stomach by the brookside, 
devouring a dirty apple from his dirty right hand, 
and from his left a thumb-soiled story of Captain 
Kidd, the one with as lusty appetite as the other, 
is, I do most honestly believe it, more probably on 
the road toward the presidency of a college or of a 
mercantile association, than your immaculate, 
daintily-attired, governess-attended little nabob, 
doing — not much of anything. Frankly, is he not 
more likely to grow up manly, truthful, courageous, 
and even chivalrous? It is a pity that rich people 
— some rich people — cannot be forced to give their 
children the advantages of poverty! Fortunately 
there is that " middle course," which the old Greeks 
declared the best. I know of one man who had a 



STILL FARTHER BACK If 

man nurse for his little boys. His orders were to 
" let them go wherever they please, and do whatever 
they like, provided they do not come to harm or 
get into serious mischief! " 

But we are wandering! Let us return to our 
brief history of Modern Education. 

Modern Education, inaugurated by Charlemagne, 
took, after the manner of the Old Testament patri- 
archs, several centuries for its childhood and youth. 
It may be said to have arrived at majority in the 
splendidly organised, kindly, but soul-suppressing 
schools of the Jesuits. The really Modern Educa- 
tion, — Charlemagne's University was but an an- 
cient beginning of Modern Education, — was a re- 
volt, Protestant, secular, or both, from these Jesuit 
schools. Limited as is our space, we must pause 
for a very brief glimpse of the most interesting 
story of Education up to the time of this revolt. 

For many centuries after Alcuin's university, 
Education went on with many and varying fortunes 
under the guidance of the Church, as did everything 
else. But when Luther appeared upon the scene, 
trailing the Protestant Eeformation after him, the 
children of the Eeformers must not, of course, any 
more attend the Eomish schools. The fiery Luther, 
once under full headway as a reformer, was a Ee- 



18 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

former to the heart's core. He Hurled missiles, 
right and left, against any " devils " in the path of 
reform, with as undaunted a spirit as he hurled his 
inkstand at the person of the original Devil him- 
self, who, he believed, came into his presence 
bodily, to tempt him. Of course there must be 
Protestant Schools! The children must be saved. 
Luther's Essay on Education is an interesting docu- 
ment: 

" Married people should know that they can per- 
form no better and no more useful work for God, 
Christianity, the world, themselves, and their chil- 
dren than by bringing up their children well. . . . 
Hell cannot be more easily deserved, and no more 
hurtful work can be done, than by neglecting chil- 
dren, letting them swear, learn shameful words and 
songs, and do as they please." 

Protestant schools sprang up to meet Luther's 
appeal. With the co-operation of men like Melanc- 
thon, Erasmus, and the Electors of Saxony and Wur- 
temburg, these schools could not fail to become a 
power. The Protestants triumphantly established 
schools and founded and reorganised several univer- 
sities. "For the first time in Germany," writes 
James E. Eussell, in his German Higher Schools, 
" schools were provided for all the people and in a 



STILL FARTHER BACK 19 

series that permitted of orderly progression from 
the elementary grades to the universities. And 
here was the real beginning of the common schools 
of Germany." 

Being familiar with the law of action and re- 
action, we shall know what next to expect. The 
Catholic Church was not of a character to look idly 
on at this undoing of her centuries of work. It 
was just at this point that Ignatius Loyola, with all 
the zeal of Holy Church in that age, bestirred him- 
self and gave his wonderful personality to the stem- 
ming of this widespreading success of its arch- 
enemy. The result was the world-famous Jesuit 
Schools, the revolt from which, as I have said above, 
may be regarded as the true beginning of Modern 
Education. " It is safe to say," writes Mr. Eussell, 
" that the world over has never seen a more power- 
ful religious order than this society of the Jesuits." 
But they paid their enemy the compliment of 
"borrowing the devil's artillery to fight the devil 
with. And they used it to good effect." They 
modelled their schools on the well-studied-out plans 
of the Protestants. The one idea in these schools 
was "Authority." No words can express too 
strongly the utter subjection to Authority, in which 
their pupils seem to have been always held. The 



20 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

interesting article upon the Jesuit schools in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica says: 

" The Jesuit polity is almost a pure despotism. 
' The sacrifice of the intellect/ a familiar Jesuit 
watchword, is the third and highest grade of obedi- 
ence, well-pleasing to God, when the inferior not 
only wills what the superior wills, but thinks what 
he thinks," etc. 

One of the maxims oftenest quoted to which the 
student subscribes is this: 

"I ought to be like a corpse, which has neither 
will nor understanding, or like a small crucifix, 
which is turned about at the will of him who holds 
it, or like a staff in the hands of an old man, who 
uses it as best may assist or please him." 

I know that there are even to-day, reverent 
friends and admirers of the Jesuits, who believe 
that the yielding of the will to superiors in no 
manner interferes with the freedom of development 
in education. The story of the Jesuits by the Eev. 
Thomas Hughes, edited by so eminent an authority 
as Nicholas Murray Butler, fills one with a deep 
desire that judgment upon the Jesuits shall not 
be a one-sided one. Nevertheless, "six grades" 
of this sort of obedience to their Order, passed 
through by its students, should prepare the mind 



STILL FARTHER BACK 21 

of even so friendly a historian as Father Hughes, 
for ultimate catastrophe. The Order, refusing 
obedience to the Pope, became " dangerous " to 
Holy Church, itself. Father Hughes should not 
marvel that "a scene of such a kind as has seldom 
occurred in history" at last took place, in the 
"universal and instantaneous suppression of the 
Order," and that by a manifesto of its own church. 
The Order, itself, was of such a kind as has " seldom 
occurred in history"! There should be surprise, 
rather, that two hundred and thirty-five years of 
such absolute sway should have gone on, before the 
end came. 

Leaving aside the Jesuit Schools, the story of 
Education, from Luther's time down to the present 
day, has been the story of a succession of noble- 
minded men who, believing in the god-like possi- 
bilities wrapped up within each individual child, 
have striven for the highest possible means of 
enabling the child to attain them. Almost at the 
head of this long and honourable list stands the name 
of that celebrated Bohemian exile, Comenius. Of 
all the wonderful searchers after Nature's methods 
in Education, none was more wonderful than he. 
For us "Americans there is a romance about him 
which none of the others possess on account of 



22 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Cotton Mather's story, that "that brave old Man, 
Johannes Amos Comenius," was invited by "our 
Mr. Winthrop, in his Travels through the Low 
Countries, to come over into New England, and 
Illuminate this College and Country, in the quality 
of a President: But the Solicitations of a Swedish 
Ambassador, diverting him another way, that in- 
comparable Moravian became not an American." 

Probably no one believes that Comenius was 
seriously invited to become the President of our 
young Harvard College. Still, it is not difficult to 
fancy that perhaps our wise Governor Winthrop, 
meeting the fascinating educator, did have 3 long- 
ing to procure his services for his beloved In- 
stitution of Learning. Why not? Everybody else 
who had any educational work to do wanted Co- 
meniuft! Why not Governor Winthrop? At all 
events, the very rumour helps to take that proces- 
sion of educators out of Phantom-land, and makes 
them seem more like actual and living men. 

The aim of this ambitious man was to teach chil- 
dren — simply everything! He was the first to in- 
culcate the principle that education begins at the 
mother's knee. Of a set of text-books planned for 
the use of schoolboys, the first, intended for boys 
in their seventh year, is "The Violet-bed of the 



STILU farther back 23 

Christian Youth, containing the pleasantest 
flowerets of scholastic instruction. " The second is, 
" The Eose-bed of the Christian Youth, containing 
Nosegays of the most fragrant Flowers of Knowl- 
edge "; for the third year, " The Garden of Let- 
ters and of Wisdom," which contains a pleasantly 
written account of " everything necessary to be known 
in heaven and earth"! His twelve chapters on 
Physics begin with "I. Sketch of the creation of 
the world," and end with "XL Of Man," and 
"XII. Of Angels." Ever longing to be occupied 
with writing his historical and philosophical works, 
he nevertheless keeps at this text-book writing, dur- 
ing all his exile wanderings. It well may need a 
life-time to write a " Pansophia/' all wisdom. 

There have been, certainly, in all ages, perceiving 
spirits who have instinctively revolted from soul- 
suppressing methods in dealing with children; but 
it was, perhaps, more than any other, the " Great 
John Locke," quoted in our dedication, who, by his 
Thoughts on Education, set the ball of universal 
revolt a-rolling, to which Eousseau's Entile com- 
municated an almost infinite momentum. Locke 
was greatly indebted, of course, to Montaigne and 
Bacon, and to many others, but his Thoughts on 
Education has been styled the " First English 



24 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Classic on Education." Locke was a reasoner. 
He would render you a reason for everything; and 
he convinced many, not only in England, but in 
other countries. We read of our own Josiah Quincy, 
in his life by his son, the following passage: 

"Locke was the great authority on all subjects 
which he touched, and, in conformity with some 
suggestions of his, as my father supposed, Mrs. 
Quincy caused her son, when not more than three 
years old, to be taken from his warm bed, in winter 
as well as in summer, and carried down to a cellar 
kitchen and there dipped three times in a tub of 
water cold from the pump. She also brought him 
up in utter indifference to wet feet, — usually the 
terror of anxious mammas, — in which he used to 
say that he sat more than half the time during 
his boyhood, and without suffering any ill conse- 
quences. This practice he also conceived to be in 
obedience to some suggestion of the bachelor phi- 
losopher." 

John Locke's reasoning, however, never aroused 
the educational world from torpor to activity. His 
book was read and complacently applauded. It won 
him consideration. But all went on much as be- 
fore. Have you not often observed that reason, 
while it convinces, seldom influences actual con- 



STILL FARTHER BACK 25 

duct? You wag your head gravely and respond, 
" True; true; it is undoubtedly true." And then, 
after a moment's complimentary, respectful silence, 
you add jauntily, " But never mind! We won't stop 
to bother this time! " And you go on in your old 
way. That is just what happened in the case of 
John Locke. The world read his book, — it's worth 
an annual reading, — and was convinced, but it 
didn't "bother." It was the passion, the human- 
ness of Kousseau's teachings, and probably, more 
than all, the story of a life illustrating them, that 
set the educational world a-bothering. 

Eousseau died in 1778. It would be most de- 
lightful to linger, if for ever so short a time, over 
the story of the growth and development of this 
New Education during the century and a quarter 
which has since elapsed, during which time, almost, 
if not quite, every popular educational scheme has 
been founded on the principles embodied in Kous- 
seau's Emile. Inspiring it would be to the thought- 
ful Parent to commune with some of the wisest in 
that procession of reformers, who passed on the 
torch through all these years, each adding to the 
brilliance of it, the lustre of his own individual 
light. Fascinating it would be to dwell for a time 
on the sad enthusiasm of the good, incompetently 



26 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

competent Pestalozzi, genius of the cumulative 
method; to dream for a while with the dreamy 
Froebel, genius of infancy and of symbolism, and 
father of the ethereal kindergarten; to visit the 
schools of the rugged Basedow, the " Object-lesson " 
genius, who brings into his school the prospective 
mother (whether living specimen or by picture I 
forget), as " object " for his lesson with his boys on 
filial piety. During the last score of years a num- 
ber of interesting accounts of the thoughts and say- 
ings and doings of these devoted educators have 
been published for the benefit of teachers. Parents, 
interested in the subject of Education, will find 
some of them profitable and interesting reading. 
Concerning Emile, an abridged edition is, perhaps, 
better for the average reader, the portions omitted 
being, for the most part, only the tiresome philoso- 
phisings with which Rousseau did too truly mar his 
work. 

It is one of my most cherished hopes that the 
Story of Education will one day be written in a 
manner especially to interest Parents; drawing for 
them from the struggles of the past, valuable les- 
sons for the present. No one dreams of calling 
himself thoroughly equipped in Law, Medicine, Di- 
vinity, Science, Commerce, Political Economy, 



STILL FARTHER BACK 27 

Statesmanship, or any other department of useful- 
ness, without gathering up the accumulated wisdom 
of the past, as a starting point for his education; 
without, in a word, knowing something of the his- 
tory of his chosen profession. Why should it be 
otherwise with so important a profession as Educa- 
tion? And it will go without saying in this book, 
that whoever indulges in the luxury of children, 
enters that profession. Moreover, it will be main- 
tained, from start to finish, in this work, that the 
Parent and not the Pedagogue, is the chief 
Educator. 

Companionship with these zealous reformers 
along the line of education, should be an inspira- 
tion to parent and to teacher; when indulged in 
with sympathetic abandon, it cannot fail to arouse 
an attitude of mind charitably observant of the 
motives which govern the mental and moral gyra- 
tions of the human spirit, especially in childhood; 
cannot fail to stir up an interest in the vital sources 
of education. They give you, these Reformers, the 
sensation of being in the company of reposeless, 
soul-unsatisfied people. Busy they were in their 
day, in eager pursuit of Nature's Method of dealing 
with her children. They sacrificed life and fortune 
in the search, even as many restless explorers of 



28 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Columbus' time, sacrificed all in feverish search for 
the Fountain of Perpetual Youth. 

Well, they were Kef owners! Was there ever a 
serene, calm-minded reformer? We are creatures 
of ideals, all of us. Most of us pursue our ideals 
silently: a reformer is one of us who cannot be 
silent. 



Ill 

"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 

" Old Europe groans with palaces, 

Has lords enough and more ; 
We plant and build by foaming seas 

A city of the poor; 
For day by day could Boston Bay 
Their honest labour overpay. 

We grant no dukedoms to the few, 
We hold like rights, and shall ; 

Equal on Sunday in the pew, 
On Monday in the mall, 

For what avail the plough or sail, 

Or land or life, if freedom fail? " 

—Emerson. 

The "New Education" entered our country 
through the gate-way of Boston, our " American 
Athens," vaunted centre of culture and education. 
It came in the form of the Kindergarten, bright, 
sparkling, effervescent, pure as a crystal spring. 
FroebePs dream was realised. His gospel of in- 
fancy, with the sacredness of childhood for its 
inspiring truth, had turned its back upon the 
Old World, where it had been frowned upon by 

29 



30 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

caste and by the pride of royalty and aristocracy. 
It had come, according to Froebel's last wish, to this 
New World democracy, where all are supposed to be 
born free and equal. This idealised America was 
the one and only country on earth where he believed 
that his ideals could have opportunity to grow to 
full fruition. It is well known how, after the Rev- 
olution, European eyes turned longingly toward 
this over-the-sea infant republic where, for the first 
time in modern history, ideal freedom was being 
enjoyed on a large scale. Surely, this was the very- 
soil upon which to sow the seeds of a New Educa- 
tion of which freedom for individual development 
was the quickening power. It does credit to Froe- 
bel's sagacity that he left his heirs inspired with 
the duty and necessity of transplanting his beloved 
Kindergarten to America. 

It is sorrowful to relate, however, that the 
Kindergarten did not meet with the reception in 
cultivated Boston, which would have given joy to 
the expectant heart of Froebel. Emerging from 
the cold, reluctant sunshine of European royalty, 
it entered into the colder electric light of the " cul- 
tured aristocracy " of Boston, which had a money- 
to-burn desire for a perfect education of its chil- 
dren — its own particular children. Some went even 



"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 31 

so far as to attempt to secure the benefit of this 
New Education in the privacy of the home nursery. 
I was acquainted with one mother who actually 
tried, by lavish offers of money, to induce a kinder- 
gartner to come to her home " after hours " and 
give " the gist of it " to her one little boy! The 
gist of it! That very gist of it is loving comrade- 
ship with others, and unselfish adjustment to them! 
My well-beloved native city amply deserves her title 
of "American Athens." She is open-minded to- 
ward high ideals in religion, music, politics, social 
ethics, education; but she did not do herself proud 
when the Few Education came from over sea, con- 
fident that her latch-string would be out to it. 
Some have even dared to imply that the freer West 
would have given it a more hospitable reception. 
Be that as it may, Boston seemed to be passing 
through a phase — a " Culture Epoch " possibly. 
Whatever it was, she was in an attitude little favour- 
able for the reception of a joyous, jubilant thing 
like Eroebel's Kindergarten. The "cultured" of 
Boston did really seem at that time, under a spell 
of fear lest enthusiasm were a defilement to re- 
spectability, even to religion and education. " Ee- 
pose in all things " was the watchword. A body of 
clergymen in and around Boston actually discussed, 



32 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

through the whole of one of their sessions, the ques- 
tion "Is enthusiasm consistent with Pure Reli- 
gion? " and I could never find out that those 
ministers of the Gospel afterwards felt ashamed of 
the fact. Speaking of it to a friend, in expectation 
of sympathy with my disturbed feelings, I received 
the simple reply, " Well, is it, do you think? " 

Let the Boston " Brahmin Caste " eliminate en- 
thusiasm from religion and from life, if so they elect, 
but fancy childhood without enthusiasm! Childhood 
is enthusiasm! Enthusiasm, if we may trust ac- 
counts, was the very breath of life of the Kinder- 
garten when the grave, philosophical Eroebel 
left his study and became the gay, Hessian- 
booted, beplumed centre of his happy children. 
And enthusiasm was of course to be admitted into 
the Boston Kindergarten; Froebel had so decreed it! 
The time allotted to it, if I remember correctly, was 
from 10 to 10.30 and from 11.30 to 12, always, of 
course, being duly regulated! "H-a-v-e a 1-i-t- 
t-l-e m-o-r-e a-n-i-m-a-t-i-o-n " reposef ully exhorted 
the master of one of the advanced kindergartens. 
Even he, himself, felt the mumedness of things. At 
the blackboard a small boy, with a worried look on 
his little face, was doing an example for the learning 
of short division and subtraction: 



"NEW EDUCATION " IN NEW ENGLAND 33 

"If one-sixth of a certain quartz rock is pure 
silex and the rest is native oxide of silicon, how 
much of each is there in 1,863,605 pounds of the 
quartz?" 

Does not every one know that the New Education 
teaches abstract processes through concrete applica- 
tions? So the master reminded us. Was this a 
flower of Froebel's sowing? We longed to send the 
little victim into the open air for a bit, to brush the 
cobwebs from his brain, and then to tumble him 
down somewhere, care-free, to do a lot of examples 
in short division till he should feel proud mastery 
of them. One thing at a time. It is as much a 
natural method to make and sharpen your tools 
before you go to work as it is to do it while you are 
working. He was so very small! 

It is to the credit of human nature in general, 
and of Boston human nature in particular, that 
these first unnatural "natural" methods did not 
score a success. Not until the truth dawned that 
the Kindergarten was the evangel of all childhood, 
and that enthusiasm and free activity were the basic 
facts of it, did the Kindergarten score any success 
in Boston or elsewhere. Nor may we ever, indeed, 
hope to achieve brilliant success in the culture of 
young children, where these twin principles are not 



34 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

recognised as foundational, — enthusiasm and the 
democracy of childhood. Boston, as I have inti- 
mated, was not at that time in a mental attitude to 
prize these qualities at their proper valuation. She 
thereby lost a glorious opportunity. It is Quincy, 
an adjoining town, to which must be accorded the 
honour of having become the " New Education " 
centre. This town it was, which caught up the - 
beautiful Nature-methods of the "New Education," 
and got itself, almost in a day, so influential as to 
very nearly, if not quite, revolutionise the manner 
of teaching throughout the country. 

Mr. C. F. Adams, in Three Episodes of Massa- 
chusetts History, has given a short but graphic ac- 
count of the " New Departure " in Quincy. He 
writes: 

"The average graduate of the Grammar School 
in 1870 could not read with ease, nor could he write 
an ordinary letter in a legible hand and with words 
spelled correctly. 

" Boys were no longer compelled by way of pun- 
ishment to clasp each other's hands across the top of 
an overheated stove until holes were burned in their 
clothes; nor, supplied with raw-hides, were they 
made to whip each other, while the master stood 
over them and himself whipped that one who 



"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 35 

seemed to slacken his blows. Scenes like these, 
worthy of Dotheboys' Hall, were reminiscences of 
the past. But there was no reason to suppose that 
the children, when they left school, read more 
fluently, or wrote more legibly, or computed with 
more facility than had their fathers and mothers 
before them. . . . The whole thing needed to be re- 
formed." 

Mr. Adams' statements are reinforced by the 
testimony of many; in Scudder's biography of 
Lowell we read that Mr. Wells, a noted Latin 
teacher of the time of LowelPs boyhood, always 
" heard a recitation with the book in his left hand 
and a rattan in his right, and if the boy made a 
false quantity or did not know the meaning of a 
word, down came the rattan on his head." In A 
New England Boyhood, Dr. Edward Everett Hale, 
with his usual directness, writes of his school 
years: 

" There was not a public school of any lower 
grade [than the Boston Latin School] to which my 
father would have sent me any more than he would 
have sent me to jail." 
And again: 

"There was constant talk of e hiding' and 
'thrashing.' Why the Boston people tolerated 



36 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

such brutality ... I do not know and never 
have known, but no change came for many years 
after/' 

It is no marvel that, even after the elimination 
of physical brutalit} r , such a condition of things 
should at last come up against a demand for a 
reckoning. This reckoning was demanded in that 
" New Departure " of 1870 in a manner not to be 
evaded. There is but one thing to be regretted in 
Mr. Adams' account of the " Quincy System/' 
namely, the suppression of his own active part in 
the movement. Mr. Adams was, indeed, chairman 
of the Quincy School Committee at the time, and 
it was to himself, perhaps, more than to any one 
else that was due the dissatisfaction with the schools 
which culminated in the " New Departure." So 
conscious were we all of this at the time, that when 
Mr. James H. Slade, to whom Mr. Adams refers in 
his account, was once asked how many there were 
on the committee, he quite expressed the public 
feeling when he answered promptly, " 10,000, — 1 
and four zeroes," and then, with enthusiasm, showed 
how it was from Mr. Adams that the whole thing 
received and retained its momentum; albeit Mr. 
Slade himself, if the story be told by any other, was 
no zero. He was, indeed, the one who, as secretary 



"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 37 

of the committee, discovered and installed Colonel 
Parker as head of the movement. 

Just what was this famous "New Departure"? 
It was simply this, — a whole New England town, 
rich and poor, learned and ignorant, doctors, law- 
yers, ministers, school-teachers and parents, all 
alike were set ablaze over the one project of rooting 
out of schools the old method of " cramming," and 
putting in place of it the idea of developing the 
faculties of the pupils; of teaching by "Nature's 
Method." In the shops, in the home, on the train, 
in the pulpit, in society, the best-discussed subject 
was the schools. For Colonel Parker, whom the 
" committee of 10,000 " had set to lead and guide 
the movement, was, as Mr. Adams naively puts it, 
" A man possessed in a marked degree with the in- 
describable quality of attracting public notice to 
what he was doing." 

Colonel Parker had travelled in Germany for the 
purpose of studying the school systems there, and 
was full to overflowing of the idea which had been 
the inspiration and rallying cry of that long line of 
educational reformers following Eousseau, namely, 
the idea of teaching by "Nature's Method," as 
opposed to rule and rote teaching; developing rather 
than cramming. They dwelt caressingly on the 



do PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Latin origin of the word education, from e and 
ducOy — a leading forth. 

Here was dethroned enthusiasm come again to its 
own! All was life, stir, noise. Not any more could 
" Repose in all things " be the watchword. Half a 
dozen watchwords, veritable war-cries they were, 
sprang into use simultaneously. Chief among them 
was "Natural Method," which is the one that has 
survived, although at the time the movement was 
called the " New Departure," and the " Quincy 
System." 

"Away with the grammar!" "Away with the 
spelling-book! " " Away with all books! " " There 
has been enough of books! And words! and com- 
mitting to memory! " Members of Colonel Parker's 
psychology class were objects of envy, and every one 
was examining himself to discover if he knew how to 
make " mental pictures," the one performance in 
which the teachers were to perfect themselves and 
their pupils. A whole new educational vocabulary 
was swiftly developed. Grammar became " Lan- 
guage Lessons." Arithmetic, "Number Lessons," 
all oral or from the blackboard. There were but- 
tons, and shoe-pegs, and little sticks, and flags, for 
"busy-work"; "study" being one of the words 
ruled out. Quincy teachers, to their credit, rallied 



"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 39 

enthusiastically about the Colonel's standard. One 
of them, Mrs. Follett, who, with native instinct, 
caught the spirit of these new ideals from the very- 
start, might with much justice be called the true 
author of the beginner's readers which he published 
at that time. 

Colonel Parker had full control of language phil- 
osophic and pedagogic, and knew how to so wrap up 
an idea in big words as to awe all into a certainty 
that, if once got at, the idea would have a size in 
proportion to its wording. And he kept half 
Quincy busy trying to get at these big ideas. 

Not only in Quincy but in Boston and vicinity, 
education was as universally discussed as inter- 
collegiate ball games are at the present time. 
" What do you think of the Quincy System? " " Is 
Colonel Parker a crank or a genius ? " " Will it be 
possible that our children can be played into an 
education?" And Mr. Adams himself, by his 
famous Phi Beta Kappa Oration, A College 
Fetich, delivered at Harvard University, fanned the 
fire of discussion into a conflagration, over the 
already mooted question as to whether colleges were 
justified in discriminating so decidedly in favour of 
an education which made Greek and Latin its 
foundation. On this question party spirit ran high; 



40 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

it was no unusual thing to quote insistently the old 
aristocratic English assertion that a man could not 
be a true gentleman without a knowledge of Latin 
and Greek. 

Meanwhile the " Old School/' particularly in 
Boston, held steadily and scornfully on its way, 
patiently awaiting the passing of this " fad " which 
irritated it like a bevy of gad-flies. One of the 
Old-School men well expressed the conservative 
sentiment when he dismissed the whole matter by 
remarking grimly: " There's just one way to get an 
education," and turning an imaginary crank with 
his right hand, uttered the one word, "grind." 
They dubbed the new movement " froth " and " persi- 
flage "; it brings up a smile now to recall the ex- 
pressive pet names they indulged in for Colonel 
Parker. 

While Boston became the conservative centre for 
exhibiting the " Splendid results of our magnificent 
school system founded by Horace Mann," Quincy, 
eight miles away, became the Mecca of the "New 
Education," whither flocked pilgrims from every 
part of our country and from abroad, even to such 
an extent as to seriously hinder the work of the 
schools. 

And did it all do good? Surely. Incalculable 



"NEW EDUCATION" IN NEW ENGLAND 41 

good. It did, we must admit, turn out a class or 
two of poor spellers before it could be realised that 
children cannot learn English, and English spelling, 
by paddling around in their own little childish 
vocabularies. They shortly brought back their lists 
of hard words. Soon they began to discover, too, 
that they could not " away with books " without 
having the children fail to learn the infinitely use- 
ful and pleasurable art of handling books, and them- 
selves getting the good from them. They found out 
a good many things when that pendulum started on 
its backward swing. And, perhaps, no true reform 
was ever effected without having the pendulum swing 
fast and far at the outset. 

The great result accomplished in this " New De- 
parture " was that, in spite of the vagaries and 
extravagances of it, perhaps even because of them, 
as was suggested in the case of Emile, people, 
parents as well as teachers, got thoroughly aroused 
on the important subject of the education of their 
children, a subject over which they had long been 
ignominiously slumbering. They were set thinking 
and discussing and doing, and this with a force that 
is still in operation. 

It was, of course, select minds that were impelled 
to come up to head-quarters for real knowledge of 



42 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

the movement, and they carried abroad the ideas 
and ideals of the reform, winnowed of their extrav- 
agances, and sowed them broadcast over the coun- 
try, where they took root and grew into quiet, 
dignified efficacy. The rapidity with which the new 
conceptions of Education were disseminated was 
phenomenal. A pamphlet was published setting 
them forth, and the whole movement was, of course, 
discussed in the educational magazines and papers 
and even in the dailies. Visitors and letters of 
inquiry came from the far West and the South, as 
well as from New England. 

The immediate results of Colonel Parker's work 
might have been much greater than they were, had 
it not been for the usual drawback in such cases. 
He never ceased lamenting that he could not find 
teachers, nor train them fast enough, to intelli- 
gently carry out his ideas. How many can, indeed, 
intelligently seize and carry out another's ideas? 
How many can rightly distinguish between liberty 
and license? To rightly carry out Colonel Parker's 
conception of school work it was necessary to do 
both these difficult things. 

In a visit to one of Colonel Parker's schools we 
found teacher and pupils hilariously enthusiastic; 
all was confusion and noise. We asked gently; 



'" NEW EDUCATION " IN NEW ENGLAND 43 

" Don't you think the children would learn more if 
they were a little more orderly? " 

Alas! we had employed two firebrands, " learn" 
and " order"! The expression on that young girl's 
face was a transfiguration as she turned to enlighten 
us. " Oh, you don't understand! " she explained, 
"we used to feel like that, but Colonel Parker 
doesn't like order! And we don't want children to 
learn, we want to wake up their minds! " And our 
hearts went out with a great sympathy for this 
same Colonel Parker! 

The fundamental principles of this "New De- 
parture " were practically the same as those of the 
Kindergarten. They got themselves expressed in 
short phrases which came into daily use. "First 
the known, then the unknown." " First the whole, 
then the parts." " From the simple to the complex." 
"From the abstract to the concrete." If these 
principles are now but an old story, it is because they 
were at this time so thoroughly instilled. 

And what, for Parents, is the lesson of all this? 
It may seem that this is an affair solely for teachers 
and the educational world. But the exact point is 
that Parents should be a part of the educational 
world; that it should be equally interesting to par- 
ents and to teachers, to be familiar with the genesis 



44 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

and exodus, the wanderings and final deliverance of 
right educational ideals. This New Education 
movement gave the final stroke which smote off 
the shackles and narrow limitations imposed upon 
Education by the Middle Ages. Henceforth, Educa- 
tion, in this country at least, will be carried on as a 
science, along with other sciences, in the light of 
research in psychology and child-study. 

Shall not Parents, as well as Pedagogues, crave 
the enlightenment which ought to come from 
sympathy with the growth of our inspiring modern 
educational ideals? Parents, even more than 
Pedagogues, should deeply feel the words of Plato: 

" Every sprout of things born, once started 
toward the virtue of its nature, fulfils it in prosper- 
ous end, this being true of all plants and of animals, 
wild or gentle; and man, as we have indeed said, is 
gentle if he only receive right education together 
with fortunate nature; and so becomes the divinest 
and gentlest of things alive; but if not enough or 
rightly trained, he becomes, of all things the earth 
brings forth, the savagest." 



IV 

SCHOOL CURRICULA 

"He pays too high a price 

For knowledge and for fame 
Who sells his sinews to be wise, 

His teeth and bones to buy a name, 
And crawls through life a paralytic 
To earn the praise of bard and critic." 

—Emerson. 

"The sovereignty of Man lieth hid in knowl- 
edge," writes Bacon. But how much may we pay 
that it shall not he " too high a price for knowledge 
and for fame"? How much of ourself shall we 
sell to he wise? And, how many of us would like 
to live our life over again, that, hy right education, 
we might save ourselves from " crawling through 
life a paralytic"! How many of us feel that we 
are small when we might have heen big; and all hy 
reason of godlike possibilities in us undeveloped! 
" Education alone can conduct us to that enjoyment 
which is at once best in quality and infinite in 
quantity." Infinite in quantity! There is the 
puzzle of it! Life is short and art is long. We 

45 



46 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

may have but a tiny share of the feast of infinite 
knowledge. What, then, shall we choose for our 
little portion? And what price shall we be willing 
to pay for it? 

For centuries Pedagogues have been strenuously 
occupying themselves with answering this question 
for childhood and youth. In spite of childhood's 
differing point of view, the past has never conceived 
the idea of letting youth answer the question for 
itself, or even help in the answering. Nor has it 
ever been the custom to invite Parents to assist in 
the answering of it. From adult, and from ped- 
agogical adult, point of view, has been brought forth 
curriculum after curriculum of school studies. 

The evolution of the school curriculum, in the 
hands of a competent historian, would be a treatise 
instructive, saddening, even pathetically amusing. 
Intensely interesting as they are, we may not pause 
to examine these curricula. We must content our- 
selves with taking a look at just one of them, Mil- 
ton's Tractate on Education, which is, perhaps, as 
strong a type as we have, of the maximum of 
" Great Expectations " in education. Viewed with 
the eyes of the pleasure-seeking, athletic youth of 
to-day, it must seem almost like a brilliant curiosity 
in the educational literature of the past, rather than 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 47 

a seriously proposed school programme. I once 
set a whole company roaring with laughter by read- 
ing aloud to them these great expectations. And, 
be it said, Milton was not by any means the first, 
or only one, to ambition exceeding great things for 
youth. It is far more profitable to understand 
somewhat thoroughly one of these schemes of educa- 
tion, than to get a misty idea of many of them. Let 
us, therefore, pause to take a fairly comprehensive 
look at this renowned Tractate of Milton's. He 
sets forth at the outset that he will " point you out 
the right path of a virtuous and noble education; 
laborious, indeed, at the first ascent, but else so 
smooth, so green, so full of goodly prospect and 
melodious sounds on every side, that the harp of 
Orpheus was not more charming." 

" First they should begin with the necessary rules 
of some good grammar [Greek or Latin be it under- 
stood]. Then, some easy and delightful book of 
education would be read to them [in Greek] whereof 
the Greeks have store, as Cebes, Plutarch, and other 
Socratic discourses. Also some few in Latin." In 
this manner they are to be " enflamed with the 
study of Learning and the admiration of Virtue." 
They are also to be taught " the rules of Arithmetic, 
and soon after the Elements of Geometry." " Aiter 



48 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

evening repasts, till bed-time, their thought will 
best be taken up in the easy grounds of Eeligion and 
the story of Scripture. The next step would be to 
the Authors of Agriculture, Cato, Varro and Colu- 
mella [all in the Latin of course], for the matter is 
most easy, and if the language be difficult, so much 
the better; it is not a difficulty above their years/' 
After learning the use of the Globes and all the 
maps with the old names and the new, they " might 
then," reading Latin fluently by this time, "be 
capable to read any compendious method of Natural 
Philosophy. And at the same time they might be 
entering into the Greek tongue, after the same 
manner as was prescribed in the Latin; whereby the 
difficulties of Grammar being soon overcome, all the 
Historical Physiology of Aristotle and Theophrastus 
are open before them." " The like access will be to 
Vitruvius, to Seneca's Natural questions, to Mela, 
Celsus, Pliny or Solinus " etc., etc., etc. 

Afterwards come Physics, Trigonometry, and 
from thence to Fortification, Architecture, Enginery 
or Navigation. " The History of Meteors, minerals, 
plants and living creatures," "as far as Anatomy," 
follows. " The helpful experiences " of hunters, 
fowlers, fishermen, shepherds, gardeners, apothe- 
caries, architects, engineers, mariners and anato- 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 49 

mists are to be introduced to give a " real tincture 
of natural knowledge." 

" Then also those poets which are now counted 
most hard, will be both facile and pleasant, 
Orpheus, Hesiod, Theocritus, Arastus, Meander, 
Oppian, Dionysius, and, in Latin, Lucretius, 
Manilius, and the rural part of Virgil." Enough 
Ethics so that they may, "with some judgment, 
contemplate upon moral good and evil," "while 
their young and pliant affections are led through 
all the moral works of Plato, Xenophon, Cicero, 
Plutarch, Laertius and those Locrian Kemnants." 
Scriptures, remember, always in the evening! 

" Being perfect in the knowledge of personal duty, 
they may then begin the study of Economics. And 
either now or before this, they may have easily 
learnt, at any odd hour, the Italian tongue." They 
are then to "taste some choice comedies, Greek, 
Latin, or Italian; Those tragedies, also, that teach 
on household matters, as Trachiniae, Alcestis and 
the like. The next move must be to the study of 
Politics." And here come in the Grecian Law- 
givers, Lycurgus, Solon, Zaleucus, Charonidas, and 
thence to all the Eoman Edicts and Tables with 
their Justinian Theology and Church History. 
" And ere this time the Hebrew tongue at a set hour 



50 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

might have been gained, that the Scriptures may be 
now read in their own original; where it would be no 
impossibility to add the Chaldean and the Syrian 
Dialect. When all these employments are well con- 
quered,, then will the choice Histories, Heroic 
Poems, Attic Tragedies of stateliest and most regal 
argument, with all the famous Political Orations 
offer themselves," and it is recommended that "some 
of them be got by memory." Then Logic; "and 
ornate Ehetoric, taught out of the rule of Plato, 
Aristotle, Phalereus, Cicero, Hermogenes, Lon- 
ginus." 

" Then Poetry, (in all languages), Epic, Dramatic, 
Lyric etc.; and the art of Composition and Elo- 
quence." 

" These are the Studies wherein our noble and 
our gentle youth ought to bestow their time in a 
disciplinary way from twelve to one-and-twenty; 
unless they rely more upon their ancestors dead, 
than upon themselves living." 

What think ye of that educational menu for your 
sons, "from twelve to one-and-twenty years of 
age"? Milton, himself, waxes enthusiastic over it: 
" Perhaps then the other nations will be glad to visit 
us for their breeding, or else to imitate us in their 
own country." He realises, too, the full magnifi- 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 51 

cence of his scheme and exclaims: "Only I believe 
that this is not a bow for every man to shoot in that 
counts himself a teacher "! 

If I remember correctly, school hours in those 
days were the same as the mechanics' working hours, 
from six to six. And is not the picture a pathetic 
one of poor little John Bunyan, fretting his baby 
conscience over the sin of loving a game of hockey 
on the village green during his short noon hour? 

Legions upon legions are the curricula that have 
preceded and succeeded that of the earnest Puritan 
Milton. And many are as ambitious as this one. 
They are past history, past history of pedagogic 
ambition. Pathetically interesting they are, but we 
must not linger with them. It is in the Present 
that we are interested. In fertility, and in per- 
sistence of devising and setting down long lists of 
things for children and youth to learn, the present 
day surpasses all preceding ages. The practice used 
to be confined chiefly to Pedagogues; in our day it is 
universal. Every nation, state, town, school, every 
Parent indeed (if he be a pedagogical one), formu- 
lates an educational theory. The curriculum re- 
ferred to in the Introduction is unquestionably the 
one of most interest to-day. The story of its mak- 
ing will easily convince us of that. 



52 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Our National Educational Association, which we 
are wont to regard with pride bordering on affec- 
tion, was instituted in 1857. It has ever been 
possible to say of it, as was said of it by one of its 
secretaries, " that chicanery, politics and wicked- 
ness have never held sway in this great organisa- 
tion." The Educational Review tells us, that " The 
National Educational Association is the largest 
body of school-teachers in the world. Its annual 
sessions, held during midsummer, assemble a 
throng of thousands of men and women, all directly 
engaged in teaching. Representatives of every 
phase of instruction then come together, and for 
several days, in groups and conventions, com- 
municate, one to another, the experiences, dis- 
coveries, and interests of the country in the field of 
American educational effort." The object of this 
annual meeting is to " concentrate the wisdom and 
power of numerous minds, and distribute among all 
the experiences of all." 

Enthusiasm at these meetings has always been at 
high pitch. "It seems to be impossible," writes 
one of its secretaries, " for the National Educational 
Association to reach a permanent high-water mark." 
Each meeting is always felt to be " the best meeting 
possible." The meeting of 1893 "was successful 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 53 

beyond expectation. It was easily the best educa- 
tional meeting ever held by that great body." It 
was at this meeting, after thirty-five years of papers, 
addresses, and discussions, that enthusiasm cul- 
minated in a desire to "undertake some specific 
pedagogical investigation." 

The report goes on, "After a careful discussion 
extending over three days, it was decided that a 
specific study should be made to improve and sys- 
tematise the work of the secondary schools," and a 
Committee of Ten was elected to do the work. " To 
carry authority, however, the specialists must be 
selected with great care," and President Eliot and 
William T. Harris head the list, all the others being 
college presidents, professors, and others of high 
standing. This Committee of Ten had " eminently 
successful" meetings. They appointed nine con- 
ferences of ten persons each, also selected with great 
care, distributed all over the country, "to ad- 
vise with them and to make suggestions." They 
issued a list of eleven questions concerning an ideal 
school course of study, to be answered by these ten 
conferences. I should like to give the questions, 
but space will not permit. By monthly reports, 
published in the Educational Review interest in the 
work of this Committee was kept lively for nearly 



54 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

a year and a half, when at last, it was announced 
that the Committee of Ten " are about to assemble 
at Columbia College to prepare its report/' and adds, 
"No committee appointed in this country to deal 
with an educational subject has ever attracted so 
much attention as this one." In the December 
number (1893) it is finally announced, that " When 
the Committee of Ten adjourned sine die on the 
11th of November, the most systematic and im- 
portant educational investigation ever undertaken 
in this country was brought to a conclusion." 

The report was published immediately by the 
United States Bureau of Education in a volume of 
two hundred and fifty pages. In the next Review 
is Mr. Harris' detailed report of it all, at the end of 
which he exclaims, " I feel confident that we shall 
enter upon a new era of educational study with the 
publication of this report." 

It was felt that Mr. Harris' prophecy was fulfilled. 
We have not, however, yet arrived at the final evolv- 
ing of that curriculum whose history we promised to 
relate. Let us continue to the end. Even before 
the disbanding of the Committee of Ten, the Com- 
mittee of Fifteen was appointed which was to bring 
forth this curriculum. 

The December number of the Educational Review 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 55 

of that same year reports: "No more important 
meeting of the Department of Superintendence of 
the National Educational Association was ever held 
than that which concluded its sessions February 
3d, at Boston. State and city superintendents 
representing over thirty States of the Union, were 
in attendance." 

Undoubtedly inspired by the thrill of new life 
which was permeating the pedagogical study of 
Secondary Schools, this meeting appointed a Com- 
mittee of Fifteen, with Superintendent Maxwell, of 
New York, as chairman, to do a somewhat similar 
work for the elementary schools. This committee 
was divided into three sub-committees, and it was 
the one on " Correlation of Studies," Wm. T. 
Harris, chairman, which evolved the yellow-covered 
pamphlet which so much wrinkled the brow of my 
young school-teacher neighbour of the trolley-ride, 
for whom I expressed so much sympathy in my 
Introduction. 

Again and again I have wished that Commissioner 
Harris would write a treatise for us Parents, ex- 
pressing up-to-date ideas and ideals, aspirations and 
inspirations, as strongly and as finely as he has the 
habit of doing it for Pedagogues. Some one cer- 
tainly ought to do it- I believe I have written the 



56 PEDAC40GTJES AND PARENTS 

long story of this curriculum, mainly for the purpose 
of expressing my profound regret that it was 
so purely pedagogical. It seems to me a matter of 
reproach that enthusiastic meetings of the highest 
educators in the land should be held to consult upon 
the well-being of childhood; that committees should 
be appointed to decide upon what children shall 
learn and how they shall learn it, — to regulate, in a 
word, the whole educational life of children, from 
the nursery to college, and that it should all be 
done without a single representative from the great 
body of the parents of those children. Not a single 
voice from the Home, that realm of childhood's free 
activities, ever seems to have entered those councils 
and round-table conferences! Every note proceeded 
from the schoolroom! The parents of the country 
were all unconscious, indeed, of the educational 
revival which was going on in behalf of their chil- 
dren. But can the highest ideals of child-culture 
possibly be attained without the complementary 
wisdom of school and home? of Pedagogue and 
Parent? I cannot think so. 

Let us examine the curriculum given on the op- 
posite page, which is the result of this high-water- 
mark of pedagogical enthusiasm. The five names 
subscribed to it are a guarantee of its being a not- 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 



57 



Branches 


Ut 
year 


2d 
year 


3d 
year 


4th 
year 


5th 
year 


6th 

year 


7th 
year 


8th 
year 


Reading . . . 


10 lessons 
a week 


5 lessons a week 


Writing . . . 


10 lessons 
a week 


5 lessons 
a week 


3 lessons 
a week 




Spelling Lists . 








4 lessons a week 






English Grammar 


Oral, with composition lessons 


5 lessons a week 
with text-book 




Latin .... 
















5 les- 
sons 


Arithmetic . . 


Oral, 60 min- 
utes a week 


5 lessons a week with 
text- book 






Algebra . . . 














5 lessons 
a week 


Geography . . 


Oral, 60 minutes 
a week 


*5 lessons a week with 
text-book 


3 lessons 
a week 


Natural Science 
+Hygiene 


Sixty minutes a week 


U. S. History . 




1 








5 lessons 
a week 




U. S. Constitut'n 










| 






*5 
les. 



General History 



Oral, sixty minutes a week 



Physical Culture 



Sixty minutes a week 



Vocal Music 



Sixty minutes a week divided into four lessons 



Drawing . . . 


1 




Sixty minutes a week 




Manual Training 

or Sewing+ 

Cookery 














One-half day 
each 


No. of Lessons 


20+7 
daily 
exer. 


20+7 
daily 
exer. 


20+5 1 24+5 
daily daily 
exer. | exer. 


[27+5 
dail.y 
exer. 


27+5 
daily 
exer. 


[23+6 
daily 
exer. 


23+6 
daily 
exer. 


Total Hours of 
Recitations 


12 


12 


im 


13 


16^ 


16M 


17M 


17% 



Length of Recita- 
tions 



15 
min. 



15 
min. 



25 

min. 



25 
min. 



30 
min. 



30 
min. 



* Begins in second half year. 



58 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

to-be-questioned illumination of the up-to-date 
pedagogical spirit and current of thought, especially 
if the ninety pages of comment be taken along with 
it. To the eyes of Pedagogues it must, I am sure, 
appear to be a soul-satisfying feast. If little chil- 
dren must enter, all upon the same hard-and-fast, 
every-hour-of-the-day-prescribed, eight-year curric- 
ulum of studies, almost wholly exclusive of manual 
training, this one does surely seem a most wisely 
thought out and arranged one. Indeed, to the un- 
wary, visiting the best ordered of our curriculum- 
dominated schools, it is quite as Mr. Henderson 
says: 

" The intention is so good, the teachers are so 
devoted, the place is so clean, the children are so 
clever and so lovable, that the effect is to create the 
impression that we have attained what we have not 
attained." 

But thoughtful parents, if they once begin seriously 
to reflect, must gasp at the presumption which 
relentlessly applies the same course of studies 
exactly alike, to all children for eight years. Every 
lesson the same, and of the same length, for each! 
Each encouraged to keep abreast in all things; to 
keep " full grade " in some class. The expansive, 
volatile, totally differing little creatures, must sup- 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 59 

press themselves along the lines of their natural 
bent, in order to slow down to the pace of the things 
they "hate" and can't do well, — oftenest arith- 
metic. Or they must struggle along with inferior, 
half-done work, in some directions, in order to pull 
themselves up to the same grade in their poor as in 
their best studies. Alas! what would you have? 
Our schools must be " graded "! 

We had occasion at one time to have a hand in 
placing a child at school, who had removed from one 
city to another. She had, by some unavoidable 
irregularities, outstripped the average twelve-year- 
old in some things, but had fallen far behind what 
is ordinarily accomplished, or rather, attempted to 
be accomplished, in arithmetic at that age. Our 
school visits in her behalf were most depressing. 
We came continually up against two most dismaying 
facts; the absolute necessity which every teacher 
felt to get the child, with the utmost promptness, 
fitted to some " grade," to get her brought up to the 
same stage in all her lessons. The second fact was 
the universality with which arithmetic was looked 
upon as the grade-regulator. Our experience was 
nearly the same everywhere. The first question 
always asked was, how far she had gone in arith- 
metic. Moreover, in attempting to determine what 



60 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

grade she might enter, the chief concern, was not of 
her general intelligence and maturity, but whether 
she was " grounded in what the class had previously 
gone over." One of the principals of an endowed 
semi-public school expressed the general verdict 
quite explicitly. After hearing our story he said 
the case seemed very simple. 

" If," said he, " she is, as you say, so far advanced 
in some things, she can afford to drop those now 
and give attention to those in which she is deficient. 
She could enter such a grade conditionally, take 
arithmetic with her own class and the class below, 
and by the end of the year she could, perhaps, enter 
the next class full grade." 

I do not know what other thing that principal 
could easily have done and maintained his " system." 
But see what it meant to that earnest, enthusiastic 
little idealist; the abandonment of all lines in which 
she was so far advanced that the pleasures of 
achievement were beginning to loom up delightfully 
in the near future. Having cultivated the tree till 
the fruit had grown, the fruit was now to be ruth- 
lessly snatched from her. In this case, visions 
splendid were to be ruthlessly brushed aside to gain 
two or three periods at school, with their attendant 
home-work, for the hated arithmetic! — which would, 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 61 

very likely, if left to itself, grow a sufficient harvest 
to get through the world on. And what was to be 
gained by all this self-denial? A conventional 
knowledge of true and bank discount, and square 
root, and the like, and, more than all, the sentiment 
of being " Full Grade." 

These "visions splendid," the personally chosen 
and loved ambitions of the child-heart, are the very 
mainsprings and inspiration of fine and fruitful 
results. The setting them aside for pursuits in 
which the student is unhappy or even indifferent, is 
a prominent element in the " wrecking of so many 
fine souls by mal-education." But more of this else- 
where. 

Of the schools which we visited, but one single 
principal expressed no concern about examining the 
child. She made a proposition to her, which could 
have originated in the mind of no person not an 
educational genius, namely: that the child herself 
should visit about among the rooms for a day or two, 
and then try in any grade where she thought she 
could do and enjoy the work. This woman's lib- 
erality is the one bright spot in our remembrance of 
that discouraging time. It may be said that the 
case of this child was a special, not a typical one. 
The principal above mentioned had not seemed 



62 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

troubled by that' consideration. She was the only 
one of them all who seemed to feel, as a matter of 
course, what Professor Search has so well expressed: 

" The school which has difficulty in placing chil- 
dren received from other schools, or who have been 
out of school for a time, is not simply out of joint 
with other schools, but is, itself, out of joint with 
Nature." 

He repeats the thought with emphasis in another 
place: 

"If the child from necessity enters school late, 
or if he must be absent a day or a week or a month 
or a term, his loss should never be disproportionate. 
He has a right to expect that the school shall fit 
his individual needs, associate him with those who can 
help him most, and permit him to advance as 
naturally as grow the trees of the forest. There 
should be no time element. He should be per- 
mitted to accomplish as he may be individually 
capable." 

No normal child should be special in the schools. 
Perhaps it would be better to say, that every child 
should be special. All children mature more 
rapidly in some things than in others. The schools 
should be so flexibly adapted to that fact that every 
child may have individual benefit from it. Should 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 63 

it be necessary, I ask you, that a child be forced to 
proceed rapidly in arithmetic in order that he may 
be allowed to stride at his own swift pace in history, 
or literature, art, or science? I have known of 
several pupils who have been kept back for a whole 
term, or year, in all their studies on account of 
deficiency in arithmetic. It is cruel and most dis- 
heartening to deprive a child of the glory of his own 
particular talents because Nature has not bestowed 
all the others on him in equal brilliancy. 

I entreat you, my fellow-parents, to go forth and 
visit your children's schools. Force the inclination, 
if it is not in you. Make the time, if you have it 
not. If you will but do that, observantly, reflec- 
tively, looking for the thing your child is doing 
and becoming, rather than for the quantity of book- 
learning he is getting, you will feel the full 
force of this chapter. You will feel the pedagogic 
one-sidedness of the atmosphere your children 
breathe during the most impressionable five or six 
hours a day of the most impressionable five or six 
years of their life. The first, most all-pervading ele- 
ment you will notice, is this very insistence upon 
conformity, or, as President Eliot calls it, "Uni- 
formity," and then unqualifiedly terms it, the 
" curse of our schools." 



64 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

I quote Professor Search once more: 

"Before the teacher, frequently of limited hori- 
zon and questionable motive, there gather in the 
school fifty children. Side by side in the same 
school sit the children of wealth and of poverty, of 
native and of foreign descent, the well-fed and the 
meagrely nourished, the warmly clad and the 
scantily protected from the storm, the refreshed by 
adequate sleep in rooms of pure air, and those worn 
from meagre hours of rest in a crowded, unventi- 
lated room, the child of luxury and the one of heavy 
responsibilities, the spoiled by indulgent parents 
and the independent through forced self-reliance, 
the robust in physical health and the incapacitated 
by past sicknesses and injuries, the well-taught and 
the ill-taught, the child of virtue and the one whose 
whole life is a moral struggle, the child of encour- 
agement and ambition, and the one heart-sick and 
of little expectancy. . . . How can any system of 
uniformity answer the responsibility which it 
assumes?" 

Is not this insatiate desire for uniformity most 
especially pedagogic, and not in the least parental? 
The conviction most common to parents is, that 
though they had a dozen children, no two would be 
alike, or do the same things, or do them in the same 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 65 

way. Parents take delight in this variety, seeking 
always to accentuate it. The more thoughtful and 
advanced educators are themselves conscious of this 
" curse " of uniformity in the schools. Mr. George 
B. Martin, a former supervisor of the Boston schools, 
in an address before the Massachusetts Teachers' As- 
sociation, once drew forcible attention to it. He puts 
it as the result of the systematising of education. It 
goes without saying that Mr. Martin exults in the 
immense progress education -has made in the last 
half century, but he has the true exultation of wis- 
dom, which can see the dangers ahead and the 
progress still necessary to make. He says earnestly: 

" The development of the city education system has 
closely parallelled the development of the factory 
system. The elements of the two have been the 
same, specialisation of function, with regular grada- 
tion of authority and responsibility. Once one 
man made a whole shoe, now thirty men make it, 
but one man directs the thirty. Once one man 
schooled a boy from primer to college, now twenty 
men and women work on him, but one man directs 
the twenty. 

" The system is not wholly good in making shoes. 
It tends to make of the workmen mere adjuncts of 
the machines they use. 



66 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

" It has not been an unmixed good in educating 
children. The essential element of a system is uni- 
formity of action of corresponding parts. As in an 
army, so in a factory, irregularity, eccentricity, or 
individuality is a blemish. So it has been regarded 
in modern systematic schoolkeeping. One of the 
earliest and one of the most persistent results of the 
grading of schools under superintendents has been 
uniformity of organisation, uniformity of discipline, 
uniformity of instruction, and so far as possible uni- 
formity in attainment in knowledge and skill. 

"Under the old system no two shoes were alike, 
though made by one man. Under the new system 
all shoes of a kind are alike, though made by many 
men. 

" Under the old systemless method of educating no 
two children came out alike from the same teacher's 
hands, nor were they expected to. Under the new 
system many salt tears have been shed because all 
children have not come out alike from the hands of 
all the teachers in a great system. 

" It will be the work of the twentieth century to 
avoid the evils while reaping the benefits of or- 
ganised industry and organised education." 

Do we want machine-made men and women? 
We do not. We want individualised human beings; 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 67 

men and women with robust conscience-led person- 
alities. Our schools have emerged from the con- 
fusion and chaos, inefficiency and illiteracy, of the 
first half of the century just closed. Horace 
Mann's noble work was the first revolt. 

When, after his time, things swung back into in- 
difference and deadness, the " New Education/' and 
the " Quincy System," wrought for us almost a 
revolution. The force of that great forward move- 
ment is not yet spent; it has been applied, during 
the last decade or more, of years, to the organising 
and systematising of the schools. We have now as 
a result, a beautiful and imposing "system," the 
harmony of whose working is being every day more 
and more felt all along the line, from kindergarten 
to college. It should be the especial mission of the 
next decade to see to it that the evils are avoided 
while we reap the benefits, of this magnificent or- 
ganisation. The evils are in full working force in 
the present curriculum-crazy age, and it does seem 
preeminently the function of the Parent rather 
than of the Pedagogue, to lead in this matter of 
rescuing the children from "machine work." I 
read of one of the Swiss cantons, I think, but it will 
fit many localities, that the supervisor had on the 
wall of his office a chart showing what was going 



68 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

on during every hour under his charge. He exulted 
over the fact that, by means of this chart and his 
list of pupils, he could tell you at any specified 
moment what every individual child in his juris- 
diction was about. The future artist, physician, 
engineer, stagedriver, college professor, were all at 
work upon exactly the same tasks, — each according 
to his " grade/' A fine bit of machinery, well-oiled 
and in good running order! 

It is the same in many, perhaps in most, of 
what are called our best schools. One of the really 
best schools in one of our large cities, has the 
following in its prospectus; it seems like a chal- 
lenge: 

" Diplomas — The diploma of the school is awarded 
to all those who have completed satisfactorily the 
entire course. Pupils will be excused from no part 
of it on account of sickness, accident, lack of 
earnestness, or inability. This applies to the 
manual and the physical, as well as to the academic 
work." 

Enterprising, surely! But does it not sound re- 
lentless! Are enterprise and relentlessness what 
are required in dealing with our children in educa- 
tion, at the sensitive pubescent age? Or at any 
other age? We may not fear that the hotly-earnest 



SCHOOL CURRICULA b9 

educators of this day will not furnish power to keep 
the educational express trains running at full speed 
and on schedule time, but, as I think I have else- 
where said, it is the absolute duty of Parents to tend 
the brakes. 

We Parents should not be terrified by the school- 
master's phrase, " Full Grade "; phrase beloved by 
school magnates, but of bodeful import to child- 
hood! To be "Full Grade" means, as far as I 
have been able to ascertain, to have been brought 
forward at an equal pace in a certain number of 
selected studies. As if that could rightly be! As 
if it should be, for any human being, child or adult! 
"As much algebra as would be acquired by three 
years of five periods per week! " By which child, 
pray? By my mathematical youngster, or your 
literary or artistic one? Is knowledge, then, so 
measurable? 

Do we, one wonders, need to be slaves to hard- 
and-fast, set-down-in-black-and-white courses of 
study, presenting the menu of the feasts for years 
ahead, with no hope of pleasant surprises in the 
fare? These theory-bound curricula are chafing to 
liberal-minded teachers, and are always needing 
amendments and changes in order to keep them 
satisfied, David Salmon, Principal of a Welsh 



70 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

training-school, in visiting our schools, is quoted as 
saying: 

" In every town I asked for the current course of 
study, but was almost invariably told that it was 
under revision. Before visiting one Normal School 
I was warned not to ask for it because there the 
courses grew obsolete faster than they could be 
printed." 

We smile at Dr. Edward Everett Hale's com- 
placency at having escaped all such machinery: 

" I have always been glad," he exults, " that I was 
sent where I was — to a school without any plan or 
machinery, like Miss Whitney's, very much on the 
go-as-you-please principle, and where no strain was 
put upon the pupil." 

We all know well enough that that sort of " go- 
as-you-please " school could not answer our needs 
to-day with our multitudes of school-children. 
Order is Heaven's first law. All we are asking for 
is that a law and order shall be evolved which shall 
fit the needs of an individual, rather than a regimen- 
tal, pace; and that the mad drive of each to keep 
pace with all in every study shall be done away with. 

Let us work and pray then, for a near day when 
rigid curricula and their accompanying "rush," 
shall be eliminated from the formative years of 



SCHOOL CURRICULA 71 

children's lives; for a day in which there will be no 
temptation to define education as "the grave of a 
great mind/' 

Our school systems are guided and controlled by 
large-minded, earnest, conscientious Pedagogues; 
but affectionate and cordial as are our sentiments 
toward them, we cannot help feeling that they 
" perfect their systems " too much in the study, and 
in councils assembled, and that hence results a 
strong tendency to go about things theory end first. 
We are right in being proud of that pet institution, 
our Public Schools, but while we take some glory to 
ourselves for the way in which we " handle the great 
multitudes of children," we ought not to pass by on 
the other side at sight of a single little child, suf- 
fering soul-starvation. Members of the vanguard 
of education are, indeed, beginning everywhere to 
search after first-hand knowledge of childhood and 
childhood's ways, which can be gotten only by 
actual contact with individual children in their free 
activities. Now Parents have that contact, daily 
and continuously; they are the natural great " other 
half" in the educational world, which, like the 
western continent, has been a long time in getting 
itself discovered. Let us now get ourselves dis- 
covered and forthwith assimilate ourselves with the 



72 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

pedagogical half to form a complete educational 
world. Such a union of the two kinds of wisdom, 
the theoretic and the practical, or, perhaps more 
courteously designated, the scholastic and parental, 
would do much to hasten the time when the educa- 
tional atmosphere shall not be of a sort to bring 
forth books with such titles as The Curse of 
Education, The Lost Art of Reading, The Generation 
of Artificial Stupidity in the Schools, and the like. 
The time is surely near at hand when Parents will 
not, with so easy conscience, relegate the whole educa- 
tional well-being of their children to Pedagogues, 
' even to faithful ones, but will exercise jealous super- 
vision and cooperation, in the entire career of those 
whom Nature has confided to their care. 



POINTS OF VIEW 

" All the world I saw or knew 
Seemed a complex Chinese toy- 
Fashioned for a barefoot boy." 

— Whittier. 

" We are but children of a larger growth." The 
converse, however, is not so true. It is not sound 
theory to regard children, except in body, as men 
and women of a lesser growth. Children are so 
unlike us in the points of view from which they 
look at things, as to be almost of a different species. 
They do see the things which we see, but not as 
we see them. So true is this, that, under the 
guidance of our different-seeing eyes, they are much 
of the time travelling blindly, even as an obedient 
horse unquestioningly follows the guidance of his 
master. 

" Take our dogs and ourselves," writes Professor 
James, " how insensible each of us to all that makes 
life significant to the other! We to the rapture 
of bones under hedges, . . . they to the delights of 
Literature and Art! " 

73 



74 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

We are wise enough to train our dog from his own 
point of view. But alas: the human child, who loves 
so well to blaze his own way through the enchanting 
labyrinths of this big world in which he finds himself, 
must follow, too unswervingly, in the paths which 
have long ago been made for him, by minds far, far 
away from his habits of thinking and feeling and 
doing. 

" I hafter do this and I haf ter do that and I keep 
a-haftering and a-haftering all the time," wailed a 
small six-year-old in a letter to a friend. He had 
newly removed to the city, and he longed to be let 
alone and to acquaint himself in his own wise, re- 
flective, childish way, with the throng of new people 
and wonders about him. 

Fortunately, a child will not, for he cannot, come 
up to our height, and view things from our larger 
horizon. He is thus in a measure self-protected. 
We may nag and bother and delay him, even to the 
point of preventing his full development, as we 
oftenest do, but, in spite of us, he remains for his 
allotted time, sui generis, a child. 

How widely different a child's point of view is 
from ours, will be a constant surprise to us, but will 
delight and refresh us, if we keep ourselves in 
sympathetic attitude toward him, ever ready to 



POINTS OP VIEW 75 

slip with him into his tiny but enchanting horizon. 
So simple is the vision of childhood! So clear and 
confiding, so uncompromisingly direct! Childhood 
has truly, what Arlo Bates calls, "A gifted sim- 
plicity of vision." 

There had been a slight fire on our street. The 
next day as we passed the place we asked, of a batch 
of children, hanging about, if they knew who lived 
there. 

"I do!" exclaimed a little fellow,, running 
up eagerly. " A little boy does; and he had 
to go away to his uncle's till his house gets 
fixed! " 

Surely! Of what account were the details of the 
little boy's attendant suite of parents and parapher- 
nalia? Not in the least worth mentioning! A lit- 
tle boy had lived there, had been burned out, and 
had been obliged to go away! That was the simple 
essential fact! 

John Locke tells of being out to dinner one day 
where he observed the most intent expression of 
interest on the face of the small son of the house, as 
Alexander the Great was being discussed. The 
company were commenting on the oft-repeated tale 
of the magnanimity and loyalty of Alexander, in 
swallowing^ potion from the hand of his friend and 



76 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

physician, even while putting into that friend's 
hand an anonymous letter, informing him that his 
physician was 'seeking an opportunity to poison him. 
After the dinner was over, Locke took the little 
fellow aside, desirous of learning the aspect in which 
the child viewed the matter, to be in so great a 
reverence of Alexander as he evidently was. He 
discovered that the child's admiration turned wholly 
on the point of Alexander's having been so brave 
and so noble as to be able to swallow at once a dose 
of nasty medicine! He, himself, had been ill the 
week before, and he knew how well-nigh impossible 
a feat it was! 

Teachers will be able to recall many instances of 
childhood's directness of vision, and Parents who 
read this chapter can, I am sure, duplicate these by 
scores. 

The following conversation actually took place 
between myself and one of our children. Of 
my own part in it, it is needless to say that I feel 
heartily ashamed — as, indeed, I am too apt to feel 
in conversation with children. We were on our 
way down town of a Sunday at just the hour when 
people were going home from the different churches. 
We met a friend and I asked him if church was out, 
meaning of course our own church. 



POINTS OF VIEW 77 

The Boy. Did he say church was out? 

I. Yes. 

The Boy. Well, what's it out of? 

I. Why, he just meant that it was over. 

The Boy. Over? Over what? 

I. There! There! The church is through; that 
is all. 

The Boy. Through! I don't see what it's 
through. 

I. Why, stop teasing, child; he just meant that 
church is all done. 

Probably I had spoken a little impatiently, for the 
Boy subsided. We walked along quietly for a short 
time, and I had dismissed the incident from my 
mind, when suddenly he piped up plaintively: 

" Well, who did it ? I thought it was all done a 
long time ago." 

The poor child had never thought of the word 
church as meaning anything but 'the edifice; and 
now I was all humiliation for my stupidity, and ad- 
miration for his persistence in getting set straight. 

This unswerving directness has always been to me 
a most fascinating attribute of childhood. A four- 
year-old friend of mine had been to a party When 
she got home her father asked her, " Who was the 
prettiest child there? " " Marguerite Davis was," 



78 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

she replied. "And who was the smartest? " contin- 
ued the foolish father. "I was," she promptly an- 
swered. No conceit in that; not a bit! The simple 
statement of facts in answer to questions, as she had 
been taught to give them. 

"We need never expect children to see things as we 
see them. They will never do it. Recall how 
wrong (?) a child's sense of proportion is by our 
reckoning. He reckons with his own little self as 
a standard of size. I once visited a town in Ver- 
mont where I had lived for a couple of years when a 
small child. I remembered the exciting times we 
children used to have climbing up and scrambling 
down a big, high, long, hill, on our way to and from 
school, and I expressed a wish to my host to revisit 
the " little red school-house." But he could not 
locate it. "It must be such and such a school- 
house," he said at last, "but there is no hill near 
it." However, we drove over to it. I recognised 
the place, but where was our " big, high, long, hill " ? 
It was a gentle, not-to-be-noticed slope! Verily, a 
child's eyes are not as a man's eyes! It used to be 
huge and frightful, with its army of geese at the top 
ready to waylay you and gobble you up! 

How this difference in point of view takes the 
naturalness out of many of our " Natural Methods," 



POINTS OF VIEW 79 

is sometimes pathetic, sometimes amusing. There 
was once upon a time an enthusiastic vender of 
"Natural-Method" maps who appeared in our 
neighbourhood. He had a beguiling pictorial map of 
the United States, which showed at sight, the 
various conditions of things all over our country. 
It was a very speaking map. There were pictures 
of mines, of ship-building yards, of factories, all 
located in their appropriate states. Scarce one of 
us in the vicinity but bought that map! We spread 
ours out triumphantly before our little girl and 
awaited comments. She looked at it long and 
speculatively. Calculation was in her eye as it 
travelled back and forth between Mexico and the 
picture of Brigham Young, with his family of 
wives and children, standing up in a row in Utah to 
represent Mormonism. She drew a sigh of content- 
ment and remarked, " Well, I'm glad I've got a map, 
at last, big enough to show the people on it. It 
would take just about six men, taking hold of hands, 
to reach across Mexico/' 

But this incident belongs in the "Natural 
Method " chapter, in dealing with which, our ability 
to go over to childhood's point of view will be put 
to severe test, for no method is a natural one which 
does not do that. 



80 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Do you never dream away valuable time looking 
back and viewing things from the centre of your 
long-ago child horizon? I smile again and again as 
I recall my first lesson in History. I had 
" skipped " the class which " began " History. I 
was looking forward with eager importance to the 
great event of adding this very dignified study to 
my already imposing list. " Worcester's Universal 
History/' — my contemporaries will remember it, — 
was put into my hands, and I was directed to learn a 
page of it. 

"In 1770 Lord North was appointed Prime 
Minister of England and all the duties were re- 
pealed except a tax of three pence a pound upon 
tea." 

It remains with me to this day, as do so many 
things which I memorised literally. First, I 
reverently looked the book through. A history of 
the whole world! I reflected, that if I should but 
commit that book to memory entire, I should know 
all history, and I then and there resolved to do it. 
History, at least, should be settled once and forever 
for me. But it wouldn't do to fail in my first 
lesson, so, with elbows on desk and chin in hands, 
I got me down to work. " In 1770." How pretty 
those twin 7's looked! That was easy to remember. 



JOINTS Otf VIEW 81 

"Lord North." Were there also Lords South and 
East and West? Probably. And what was a 
Lord, anyway? I thought there was but one Lord, 
the one who made Heaven and Earth. No matter, 
I had better go ahead and learn it. "Was ap- 
pointed Prime Minister." Deeper and deeper. Of 
course I knew what a minister was; I saw ours 
every Sunday, but I didn't know whether he was a 
prime one or not. " Of England/' Ah, now I 
was on familiar ground. I knew all about Eng- 
land; it was that little red country up in the top 
left-hand corner of the map, with Scotland for a 
head and Wales in its lap, and Ireland close by. 
" And all the duties were repealed." Oh, dear! Of 
course I knew what duties were; I had had that 
dinned into me often enough, but what did "re- 
pealing " them mean? And by the time I had got 
to that "tax of three pence upon tea," I knew I 
was utterly beyond all possibility of comprehend- 
ing things. So I concluded that the best thing 
I could do was to hurry up and learn the whole 
thing as fast as I could; which was an exceedingly 
wise decision, and, which, half an hour later, 
brought sweet solace in the form of praise for learn- 
ing my lesson so well! 

What better was to be expected of me with 



82 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

the judgment of but twelve years at my service? 
Judgment is the result of experience, and this was 
my very first experience in history! I think it was 
Jean Paul who declared that he "would as soon 
require a child to have five feet in height as to have 
judgment and proportion at the age of ten." 
Much so-called naughtiness is simply inability to 
judge of what adults call right and wrong. It is 
not wrong in itself, for little boys to dig caves and 
live romantic, fancy-free lives in them, — provided 
they know how and when and where to do it, to fit 
the convenience of their elders. But how are the 
little things to judge of all that? If they are left 
to themselves, and they judge wrongly of the how 
and the where and the when, or don't think to judge 
at all, but just follow play instinct and go ahead, 
should they then be punished? Or should they be 
lovingly taught? I give you the story of it and 
you shall judge. I quote it from Jane Addams' 
most instructive book, Democracy and Social 
Ethics. 

" Three boys, aged seven, nine, and ten, were once 
brought into a neighbouring police station under the 
charge of pilfering and destroying property. They 
had dug a cave under a railroad viaduct in which 
they had spent many days and nights of the summer 



POINTS OF VIEW 83 

vacation. They had i swiped ' potatoes and other 
vegetables from hucksters' carts which they had 
cooked in true brigand fashion; they had decorated 
the interior of the excavation with stolen junk, 
representing swords and firearms to their romantic 
imaginations. The father of the ring-leader was a 
janitor, living in a building five miles away in a 
prosperous portion of the city. The landlord did 
not want an active boy in the building, and his 
mother was dead. The janitor paid for the boy's 
board and lodging to a needy woman living near the 
viaduct. She conscientiously gave him his break- 
fast and supper and left something in the house for 
his dinner every morning when she went to work in 
a neighbouring factory; but she was too tired at 
night, to challenge his statement that he would 
rather sleep outdoors in summer, or to investigate 
what he did during the day. In the mean time the 
three boys lived in a world of their own, made up 
from the reading of adventurous stories and their 
vivid imaginations, steadily pilfering more and more 
as the days went by, and actually imperilling the 
safety of the traffic passing over the street on the 
top of the viaduct. In spite of vigorous exertions 
on their behalf, one of the boys was sent to the 
Beform School, comforting himself with the con- 



84 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

elusive remark, 'Well, we had fun, anyway, and 
maybe they will let us dig a cave at the school. It 
is in the country, where we can't hurt anything.' " 

Poor little fellows! They ought, of course, to 
have been chidden; no, on second thought, remem- 
bering that they had never been taught, I am not 
so sure of that. I think their doings should have 
been ignored; that they should simply have been 
taken care of. Who could help inwardly admiring 
their skill, and their good taste in not sitting pas- 
sively on the filthy door-steps of their inhospitable 
" homes " and idling away their time ? It was so 
much more manly to provide themselves a place to 
live in! These children should have been put 
where they could have passed through their cave- 
dwelling epoch under sympathy and guidance. 
Was it not, I ask, a crime to send that ten-year-old 
boy to a Eeform School? A stain left for life on 
his good name! He did not need reform! He 
needed opportunity! Shame upon civilisation! 
How bewildered children must become when we deal 
with them like that! These boys were regarding 
things directly from their own point of view; they 
were instinctively following out the law of self- 
interest. So mature an element as judgment did 
not even enter in! "Childhood," says Kousseau, 



POINTS OF VIEW 85 

" has ways of thinking and feeling peculiar to itself; 
nothing is more absurd than to wish to substitute 
ours in its place." Nothing is more absurd than to 
think that we can. 

It is on account of his limited horizon, beyond 
which a child can only dream, that he cannot be 
much influenced by promises of distant rewards. 
His life is lived almost strictly in the present. " A 
bird in the hand is worth twa' fleein' by! " and the 
more so, that the limited vision does not even see 
the " twa' fleein' by/' Nor would we wish it other- 
wise. Who would like free-hearted, spontaneous 
childhood weighted with the care which we are 
forced to carry? It is right for childhood, even as 
it is disgrace for maturity, to 

' ' Take the cash and let the credit go 
Nor heed the rumbling of a distant drum." 

"Woe to him who deprives childhood of its birth- 
right, which is opportunity to unfold and develop it- 
self in the midst of freedom and love and beauty. 
It is not because children are " little animals," that 
they are so intent upon present and material things. 
The physical part must develop first. It is Nature 
taking care of her own; she is right in not trusting 
us; we are not yet to be trusted. We have not yet 



86 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

educated ourselves to follow the call of the good 
Froebel, " Come, let us live with our children." It 
it easier, and it takes less wisdom, to call our 
children to come and live with us; and we think it 
amounts to the same thing. 

It is, however, fixed decisively, that children can- 
not come up and see things from our higher point of 
view. If we are wise, we may and must come down 
to theirs. Children see things in which they them- 
selves are interested, and they will with difficulty 
be made to see much of anything else. Moreover, 
each one sees things in his own way and will with 
difficulty be made to see it in any other way. Let 
us, then, hold ourselves in responsive, sympathetic 
attitude in our communings with children, and 
slowly and leisurely invite confidence. We shall 
then get glimpses into a most refreshing child- 
world; shall behold things again with the eyes which 
used to be ours so long ago. We shall become little 
children again, perhaps, and so be able to enter into 
the kingdom of Heaven. 

One of our children expressed himself earlier and 
more fully than the others, and his little speeches 
were veritable revealings of baby points of view. 
Out on the water in a row-boat at fifteen months of 
age, he waved his wee hand to take in the scene and 



POINTS OF VIEW 87 

said in awe-struck tone, " Big tub! Full o' water! " 
— his conception of the ocean! 

We had been accustomed to let this child take the 
glass, in his own hand with an inch of water in it 
and manage the business himself, when he wanted a 
drink. One day a visiting friend offered him his 
"jink o' water." He did not immediately take it, 
but stood gazing at it solemnly with big eyes. 
Finally he stretched forth his tiny hands and ex- 
claimed, with drawn-out emphasis on the word 
" big ": " B-i-g water! Baby jink it all up! " Sure 
enough! The glass was a third full! Suppose 
yourself to have been accustomed to drink from a 
glass gallon measure with a pint of water in it, and 
to have all at once been promoted to having two or 
three quarts! ISTo wonder the little man rolled up 
his sleeves and took both hands to it! 

A moment's reflection will quickly lead one to 
realise how the material world about a child is not 
at all of the same proportions or perspective that it 
is to us. How can a child, for instance, see things 
as we do, in a home-world where the rooms are four 
times his height, more or less; pictures hung high 
up over his head, tables on a level with his chin or 
the crown of his head? — everything arranged to 
fit, not him, but the adults? Out rowing the other 



88 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

day I got hold of an extra heavy pair of oars, and 
being annoyed by it, I reflected, very likely on ac- 
count of having been at work upon this chapter, 
that, after all, they were of about the same size 
proportionately, as the pair the boy rows with all 
the time! 

It is fair to conclude that children's mental and 
moral perspectives are as much at variance with 
ours as is their material. How that thought, 
sympathetically applied, illumines many an other- 
wise inexplicable saying or performance of child- 
hood! Oftentimes makes even praiseworthy, what 
had seemed like naughtiness! 

But enough. We may not wonder that children 
fashion worlds of their own to live in; surely very 
little of ours is fitted to them. Civilisation is for 
" grown-ups." That is right, too, only let us realise 
it as we deal with the children, and ever bear in 
mind that we are at home while they are in an alien 
land. 



VI 

INDIVIDUALITY 

" A farmer in Bungleton had a colt 

That couldn't be taught to moo, 
And he kept his cow under lock and bolt 

Till the smith could make her a shoe. 
His ducks wouldn't gobble, his geese wouldn't quack; 

His cat wouldn't bark at all ! 
' I'm clean discouraged,' he cried, 'Alack ! 

I'll give up my farm in the Fall ! ' " 

" To teach men how they may grow independently and for 
themselves, is, perhaps, the greatest service that one man can 
do for another." — Jowett, in a letter to Palgrave. 

Bungleton is a most discouraging place in which 
to get an education. Would that every Bungleton 
teacher would give up his school in the Fall! 

" What knowledge is of most worth? " asks 
Spencer. President Jordan answers it in his little 
book, The Voice of the Scholar: " It is clear that the 
knowledge is of most worth which can be most 
directly wrought into the fabric of our lives. That 
discipline is most valuable which will best serve us in 
quietly unfolding our own individualities." 

The passionate longing of every true educator, 
69 



90 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

whether Pedagogue or Parent, is that our schools 
may become the place where children shall be as- 
sisted, each individually, to attain to his highest 
possibilities of power and enjoyment. This longing 
is apparent in every worthy book on the subject of 
Education. It is an anxious concern in the heart 
of every worthy Parent. This chapter, it shall be 
announced at the outset, is a plea for the children 
to be allowed, both at home and at school, to be and 
act themselves in the present, and be helped to 
become, each his own particular ideal self, in the 
future. What but that, is true Education? 

In Mr. Adams' before-mentioned account of the 
schools at the time of the " New Departure " in 
Quincy, he gives an account of an examination by 
the state authorities of Massachusetts, which was 
held to probe into the condition of school affairs. 
He affirms, that in the papers returned by the 
children, there were actually employed fifty-eight 
wrong ways of spelling " which," one hundred and 
eight of " whose," and two hundred and twenty-one 
of "scholar"! Concern for the youngsters is lost 
sight of in curiosity about this puzzle. Some of us 
set about making a list of those possible spellings. 
" Which, whitch, wich, wch, wuch, whuch, whutch, 
wuch, wutch, wach, watch, wech, wetch; " then all 



INDIVIDUALITY 91 

these over again beginning with "hw" instead of 
" wh," for «you will admit that it is pronounced 
" hw " and not " wh." Then duplicate again, begin- 
ning with "her," as "herwich," then still again, 
beginning with " hur "; and still again with " hu " 
(pronounced huh), etc. No one but a teacher in the 
North End of Boston, or the East Side of New 
York, would instinctively realise the number of 
ways that word "which" can be pronounced, and 
children spell as they pronounce. 

Much amusement may be got from all that, cer- 
tainly, but also much more than amusement. One 
gets from it a revelation of the many and marvellous 
ways there are of coming at a thing. And I main- 
tain that if children, left to themselves, show up so 
many ways of coming at the sound of a simple word 
like "which," then surely we ought to be humble 
about believing that we can invent for them a one 
and only way by which they may all be brought 
" naturally " to the appreciation of any idea. Does 
not the incident throw a flood of illumination upon 
the workings of a child's mind? 

Although educated people have been allowed the 
privilege of doing it up to within a few generations, 
we know that we cannot allow children to spell 
"which," and other words, each according to his 



92 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

particular fancy, during too many of their years. 
For all that, many of us Parents would like to see 
children come at things more after their own 
fashion, and to come at more things which are 
their own heart's desire. We are waiting with pa- 
tience for the coming of the child millennium, when 
the Committee-of-fifteen, hard-and-fast, no-sop-to- 
individuality curriculum, shall he a thing of the 
past; when the fine educational " plant," — the 
beautiful buildings and apparatus, which the zeal 
of the past generation has given us, — shall be devoted 
to the education of children, not en masse, but of 
each particular child. This should be the next step 
in educational progress. Childhood starts out in 
infinite variety, which is its chief charm. Your 
boy, perhaps, has lively fancies and poetic imagin- 
ings and delights in worlds of his own creation; is, 
maybe, intended by Nature for a Hawthorne or a 
Kipling. Mine, an incipient Edison, possibly, goes 
into rapt ecstasies over batteries, and motors, dis- 
courses easily of death currents and safe ones, and 
spends all his surplus time and money on things 
electrical. Let each have his opportunity. Give 
Nature free scope to work her will with these self- 
impelled children of hers. Alas! It may not be. 
The programme of the august Committee must 



INDIVIDUALITY 93 

gather them, all alike, into its machinery. For were 
not these men two long years fashioning and perfect- 
ing this curriculum? And "Are they not all hon- 
ourable men? " 

How we hammer away at our children! Never 
mind which iron is hot or cold, strike! Then we 
wonder, in our " adult egotism," why our pounding 
does not fashion our model! And whose is it to 
see that this wrong is righted? Certain it is, that 
the Pedagogues will keep the educational machinery 
well oiled and running at full speed; but it is we, 
not the Pedagogues, to whom it is given to protect 
the individual child. The Pedagogue at the 
throttle, the Parent at the brake! We should slow 
down! 

Who would not like to return to the charming 
simplicity of the old Greeks? Is it Huxley, or is it 
Davidson, — no matter who it is, many say it, — who 
avers that the intellectual development of the 
ancient Greeks was as much above ours, as ours is 
above that of the South African negro. Can we 
resist the temptation to account partly for that 
fact, if fact it be, by the exceeding simplicity of 
their methods of Education? No foreign languages 
to acquire, little geography, no arithmetic worth 
mentioning, no two-year courses of five periods per 



94 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

week each in algebra and geometry. For history 
and literature, the beautiful stories of Homer, 
recited to the eager youth. For lessons in govern- 
ment, silent attendance upon the law-makers. 
Plenty of time for growing; for thinking one's own 
fresh young thoughts! for developing! 

The most pathetic figure within the educational 
horizon during this past four years, has been, per- 
haps, the deaf and blind Helen Keller pursuing her 
way, all unconscious of her own heroism, through 
Kadcliffe College. I quote you one of her themes, 
fingered forth upon her type-writer, and ask you if 
the pathos pervading it is not a thing for which we 
others, with our full number of senses, should ask 
her forgiveness. 

" There are disadvantages, I find, in going to 
college. The one I feel most is lack of time. I 
used to have time to think, to reflect, my mind and 
I; we would sit together of an evening and listen to 
the inner melodies of the spirit which one hears 
only in leisure moments, when the words of some 
loved poet touch a deep, sweet chord in the soul 
that has been silent until then. But in college 
there is no time to commune with one's thoughts. 
One goes to college to learn, not to think, it seems. 
When one enters the portals of learning, one leaves 



INDIVIDUALITY 95 

the dearest pleasures; — solitude J books and imagina- 
tion, — outside with the whispering pines and the 
sun-lit, odorous woods. I suppose I ought to find 
some comfort in the thought that I am laying up 
treasures for future enjoyment; but I am improvi- 
dent enough to prefer present joy to hoarding riches 
against a rainy day. 

" It is impossible, I think, to read four or five dif- 
ferent books in different languages and treating of 
widely different subjects in one, and not lose sight 
of the very ends for which one reads, mental stimulus 
and enrichment. When one reads hurriedly and pro- 
miscuously, one's mind becomes encumbered with a 
lot of choice bric 7 a-brac for which there is very 
little use. Just now my mind is so full of hetero- 
geneous matter that I almost despair of ever being 
able to put it in order. Whenever I enter the 
region that was the kingdom of my mind, I feel like 
the proverbial bull in the china-shop. A thousand 
odds and ends of knowledge come crashing about 
my head like hail-stones, and when I try to escape 
them, theme-goblins and college nixies of all sorts 
pursue me, until I wish, — Oh, may I be forgiven 
the wicked wish! — that I might smash the idols 
that I came to worship." 

Under the guidance of a seeing mind, Helen 



96 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Keller has, up to the present time, developed with a 
rapidity which seems a miracle. She is like a child 
of the entire public; so affectionately interested are 
we all in her progress and welfare. We look on in 
a sort of dazed wonderment. If we are still to be 
allowed to follow her career, we shall watch with 
desire to know whether she profits by this hail- 
storm of knowledge, whether she succeeds in escap- 
ing from the goblins and nixies which pursue her, 
or, whether she smashes her idols, — as so many of 
our youth ultimately do. Will it all arrest her past 
wonderful rate of development? Will it, as is 
the function of Education to do, bring to fulfilment 
the rich promise of childhood? Personally I gasp 
with reverent awe as I ask myself these questions. 

Previous to the time of her entering into the toils 
of college-preparatory work, Miss Keller's education 
had proceeded along lines natural and delightful 
to her own particular self. Every iron struck had 
been a hot one; and time had been taken for the 
hammering of each iron exactly to its need; then 
suddenly she entered into a contract with a stiff, 
prescribed " course." I experienced a feeling of 
genuine dismay when I came upon her statement 
that her principal, in spite of her having "no 
aptitude in mathematics," "had agreed that that 



INDIVIDUALITY 97 

year I should study mathematics principally. I had 
physics, algebra, geometry, astronomy, Greek and 
Latin." Was it not almost a foregone conclusion 
that her principal's next duty should be to declare 
that she was "working too hard," and insist upon 
the cutting down of her recitations? Possibly if 
she could have had a small portion of genuine soul- 
nourishment along with mathematical training, the 
subsequent unpleasant break need not have oc- 
curred. At all events, it is to the credit of the 
human soul that it is so automatically rebellious 
under certain conditions. Our physical system 
would be equally rebellious if we were to offer it a 
diet of all solid meat; no appetising soup, no dainty 
dessert. Was it any marvel, that, after examina- 
tions were successfully over, she should write exult- 
ingly to a friend, "I've said good-bye to mathe- 
matics forever, and I assure you, I was delighted to 
see the last of those horrid goblins! " 

It is not a Helen Keller alone who spends hours 
of seemingly unprofitable study over mathematics, 
only to exultantly leave them behind forever. It 
does surely seem an important thing, and is nearly 
always a pleasurable one, for even unmathematical 
minds, to make some acquaintance with algebra and 
geometry, to become a little familiar with the 



98 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

harmony and trend of mathematics, to feel a friend- 
ship with x, y and z, to feel at home in the relation- 
ship of the diameter, circumference, and area of 
circles, and the like things, which have connection 
with the world and life. But, looking at it from 
any side, it seems to me unpardonable, even cruel, 
to require the eager student, aiming at success in 
Art, Music, or Literature; Divinity, the Law, or 
Medicine, to pause and give valuable, and often ill- 
afforded hours, to the abstractions of difficult ex- 
amples in the Binomial Theorem and Simultaneous 
Quadratics. I am not pedagogically trained, and 
am perfectly conscious that I am not qualified to 
offer a professional opinion on such matters. I 
only offer these opinions as the strong feeling of a 
practical Parent, in sympathy with ambitious youth 
who desire to make a career for themselves, in this 
highly competitive and highly specialising age, and 
who yet desire to feel that they are liberally 
educated. Remembering that it is only to "the 
mind which loves it" that any study gives true 
discipline, it does seem that in the immensity of 
knowledge, there should be many other forms than 
mathematics," which ought to be acceptable alter- 
natives in entering college. And even for those 
who do love mathematics, it does not seem to be a 



INDIVIDUALITY VV 

study calculated to develop power in thought or 
action, — except along its own lines. Indeed, I 
believe it may be questioned whether mathematics 
does not actually unfit the mind for other and less 
abstract work. For those not classically minded, 
there has been provided an alternative whereby 
students may enter college without Greek. The 
turn of the unmathematically-minded will yet come. 
But enough. 

It is written of Browning: " The boy had an in- 
different experience of formal schooling in his 
youth. The more fertilising influence of his in- 
tellectual taste was found in his father's books." 

This fact, — that the boy or the girl got little from 
the school, — is one of the most common ones in the 
early chapters of biography. It would be a nar- 
rowly educated person who left out of his life every- 
thing not on the track of his particular career; yet 
in these days one cannot be expert in any direction 
if he goes to great length in others. A student 
expressed the idea when he said he hoped to be a 
jack of all trades and a master of one. A well-indi- 
vidualised character has, most often unconsciously, 
power and will to pass by what it cannot assimilate. 
Such minds are self -impelled along the lines which 
shall furnish their spirit with real nourishment, even 



LofC. 



100 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

though at the expense of school and college honours. 
Greatness cannot be run into moulds. It is its own 
ideal toward which it ever aspires. Thus it is that 
those destined to be the Great Ones of earth do not 
by any means always le,t their greatness appear while 
at school. 

But the greatness, the genius, of the mass of 
youth is not thus self-protected, for the mass of 
youth is not " great," is not strongly individualised. 
The hours set apart for education should not be 
spent in " Bungleton." They should be passed in 
an atmosphere where pupils may receive " the 
greatest service that one man can render another," 
namely, the teaching them how they may grow inde- 
pendently. To some of us Parents, the seeming loss 
of personality which the great mass of our youth 
sustain in the getting of an education, is dismaying 
in the extreme. In his facetious, but deadly serious 
manner, Gerald Stanley Lee bemoans the situa- 
tion: 

" One wonders if there could be such a thing as 
having all the personalities of a whole generation 
lost. One looks suspiciously and wistfully at the 
children one sees in the schools. One wonders if 
they are going to be allowed, like their fathers and 
mothers, to have personalities to lose. I have all 



INDIVIDUALITY 101 

but caught myself kidnapping children as I have 
watched them flocking in the street. I have wanted 
to scurry them off to the country, a few of them, 
almost anywhere — for a few years. I have thought 
I would try to find a college to hide them in, some 
back-county, protected college, a college which still 
has the emphasis of Persons as well as the emphasis 
of Things upon it. Then I would wait and see what 
would come of it. I would at least have a little 
bevy of great men perhaps, saved out for a genera- 
tion, enough to keep the world supplied with sam- 
ples — to keep up the bare idea of the great man, a 
kind of isthmus to the future/' 

There is indeed, I am perfectly aware, a basic 
stratum of knowledge which all should acquire, — 
the knowledge which is necessary to enter social, 
religious, political, and business life and play our 
part. But all the first educators of our country, 
of the world perhaps, now seem to agree (theoreti- 
cally), that this common foundation is a small one. 
For instance, concerning Arithmetic, Professor 
Hanus, of Harvard, says that in about five years, 
(by eleven years of age), a child can learn all the 
arithmetic he needs for the ordinary affairs of life 
and for further progress in mathematics. It is the 
same with all the fundamental elements in E&uca- 



102 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

tion. They should receive less time that more may 
be given to following out the individual bent. Presi- 
dent Eliot but voices the sentiment of almost the 
entire educational van when he writes: 

"I think the safest way in the education of a 
single individual child, is to find out, if you can, 
what that individual child likes most in the way of 
intellectual exertion, and does best in and then to 
see to it that that child gets instruction in 
that thing, if he gets nothing else." 

Bacon preceded President Eliot by three hundred 
years in this thought, — " The natural bent of in- 
dividual minds should be so far encouraged that a 
scholar who shall learn all that is required of him, 
may be allowed time in which to pursue a favourite 
study." 

" The keys to interest should be individual," 
writes Professor Search. "If one key will not 
answer, another should be tried at once. Within 
every heart is a germ of divinity, which will respond 
to life when given its own culture; but, to any great 
extent, this culture is not possible under the in- 
carceration of uniformity." 

In spite of a strong sentiment to the contrary, 
which pervades all educational theory, the schools 
plod steadily on in their relentless grind, putting 



INDIVIDUALITY 103 

your gentle poetic Tom, my sturdy mechanical Dick, 
and that other literary Harry, all through the same 
paces during their impressible formative years, leav- 
ing them no time or energy or nerve force for any 
"favourite study." And soon their years of study 
are over; it is too late! True, on their atlases they 
have hunted down the little towns which are the 
capitals of Idaho and Wyoming and the rest; they 
have learned that the Congaree and Wateree unite 
to form the Santee; they have been able at some dim 
time in the past, though it may be like a dream to 
them now, to "locate nineteen oriental cities, and 
tell what each is noted for"; they have worried 
through some unpractical sort of misty half-knowl- 
edge of bills of exchange, bank and true discount, 
and perhaps remember a little of it. They have 
learned and recited and received due credit for many 
things which we have decreed that they ought to 
know, and which we call foundational knowledge. 
Meanwhile have we troubled ourselves to discover 
whether there has been any clearing of the channels 
for the free flowing of the current of each one's own 
eager thought? Have we answered their own ques- 
tions or tried to satisfy their individual longings? 
Have we been a cloud by day and a fire by night to 
guide each of them to the promised land toward 



104 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

which he himself is striving? Or has our " adult 
egotism " entirely dominated him? These ques- 
tions are well worth answering. 

In spite of protest after protest from the wisest 
of every age, why must we forever keep practice 
trailing so far behind theory? It is b'ecause we 
believe so fondly in our little worked-out theories. 
Come right down to it, we hate to give them up. 
We linger lovingly over them. " The prime ob- 
stacle to our doing the best that might be done for 
our children/' writes Patterson Du Bois, "is our 
adult egotism." Yea, verily. They tell us it is 
good discipline for our children, to be put relent- 
lessly through those studied-out curricula. One 
wonders! Are we not tickling ourselves with a 
phrase? Is it, then, profitable discipline to follow 
from hour to hour, day after day, the will and plans 
of another? Or rather, is not that the divine, 
character-forming discipline which leads us to 
educate and control our own will and follow that? 
" The man who can will is a factor in the universe." 
Even the brute can follow, can compass blind obedi- 
ence. Obedience is for slaves; not too much of it 
for the Sons of God pursuing their far-away ideals! 
Too long have children been led by our " adult 
egotism." Let us have a season of humility and 



INDIVIDUALITY 105 

follow their lead in their own concerns. " To fit 
man into schemes of Education has been the mis- 
take of the past. To fit Education to man is the 
work of the future/' for "no man was ever well 
trained whose own soul was not wrought into the 
process. No student was ever brought to any- 
worthy work but by his own consent." 

"Under compulsion, pupils respond to external 
demands only/' says Professor Hanus; " they know 
little of the joy of achievement and of the pleasure 
of intellectual activity in general." 

" The best test of the efficiency of an educational 
method/' says James L. Hughes, " is the amount of 
true self-activity it requires of the child in the 
originative, directive, and executive departments of 
its power." 

And President Jordan tells us that " The fact 
that any man dares to specialise at all, shows that 
he has a certain independence of character; for 
the odds are against it. Specialisation implies 
thoroughness, and I believe that thorough knowl- 
edge of something is the backbone of culture." 

Do you dream then from all that, that Parents 
should go into the schools and make havoc among 
the really fine and conscientious things that are 
being done there? Not in the least. I am no 



106 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

iconoclast. I know well that nothing can be done 
too suddenly in the schools. Moreover, I know that 
some discipline and drill are necessary in the forma- 
tion of character, some literal obedience to the wis- 
dom of a trusted leader. But, surely, not seven 
hours of it a day in childhood! Large bodies move 
slowly; yet they need not necessarily move too 
slowly. Many principals and teachers frankly 
admit the sorrowfulness of the situation with regard 
to this thing, and confess to us, " All these things 
are really so; we ourselves have very different and 
much higher ideals, but they cannot be carried out 
with so many pupils. When each teacher has forty, 
or fifty, or, even sixty, pupils in charge, we cannot 
give attention to individual children. Of course it 
ought to be done, but it cannot be." Ought to be, 
but cannot be! Shame on such cowardice! Every- 
thing that ought to be, can be. This thing ought 
to be, and it can be. Did it ever occur to any one to 
give up the building of Brooklyn Bridge, or the 
Boston Subway, on account of stupendous diffi- 
culties? 

We do not often, however, give the children in- 
dividual treatment, even when it is easily possible. 
The idea is not yet sufficiently in the air. Think 
of the fine individual care the horse-breeder or 



INDIVIDUALITY 107 

trainer gives to each animal from which he hopes 
bine ribbon or pnrse! 

"It is time/' writes Herbert Spencer, "that the 
benefits which onr sheep and oxen have for years 
past derived from the investigations of the lab- 
oratory, should be participated in by onr children. 
Without calling in question the great importance of 
horse-training and pig-feeding, we would suggest 
that, as the rearing of well-grown men and women is 
also of some moment, the conclusions indicated by 
theory, and endorsed by practice, ought to be acted 
on in the last case as in the first." 

It is difficult, it is well-nigh impossible now, to 
give a child the proper proportions of knowledge- 
getting and of free individual development, because 
the idea is not a prevailing one, and we do not live 
to ourselves alone. Man is a gregarious animal, 
and cannot be rightly educated apart from his 
fellows. But it is from the parental side, and 
not from the pedagogical, that a new atmosphere 
must be breezed up. It cannot too often be reit- 
erated, that it is naturally to the Parent that a 
child is to look for his individual protection and 
care. 

If we could but get both Parents and Pedagogues 
filled with a deep inspiring faith in the impulses 



108 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

and longings which may at all times be observed in 
children, and could then appoint them together on 
curriculum committees and Normal School faculties, 
we should not send our teachers forth to meet the 
spontaneity of childhood, armed with even the best 
eight-year curriculum of tasks for every fifty- 
minute period between the ages of five and fifteen, 
and fortified with half-a-thousand wonder-working 
"natural methods." We should send them forth 
with a great reverence for childhood, to begin 
with, — reverence for all childhood, good and " bad/' 
attractive and unattractive. We should fill them 
brim-full of the necessity there is of teaching each 
child to " let himself go," and then of properly 
guiding himself. It is only when under headway 
that skilful steering can be done. We should see to 
it that the young men and women intrusted with 
the teaching of our children are filled with the spirit 
of the New Education, which imparts a love of 
knowledge; which lifts up the head and the heart 
and the courage of childhood and youth, and faces 
them, happy-hearted, towards ideals of their own 
evolving; which hesitates to tread upon the person- 
ality of a single pupil, recognising that to destroy 
or to mar that, is to put future power and mastery 
in highest jeopardy. 



INDIVIDUALITY 109 

I have known several children who, by some acci- 
dent or occasion, were freed from grown people's 
schemes and methods, and have almost immediately 
shown forth brilliant " capability and god-like rea- 
son " which had been rusting within them. A nine- 
year-old friend of ours developed a trouble in the 
eyes, which necessitated either leaving school, or the 
wearing of glasses. Her parents did not hesitate. 
She was taken from school, given a very few daily 
lessons to " keep her going," and turned, free lance, 
into the open air. Forthwith she set about the 
writing of animal stories and the drawing of 
animals, and calmly announced a resolve to follow 
after Eosa Bonheur, and Eemington, and Thompson 
Seton! And this to such a degree that the impulse 
which she then gave herself in that direction bids 
fair to be the dominating one in her career. 

A young woman of my acquaintance, throwing 
heart and soul into work along the lines upon which 
she was " hot," had achieved a triumph in historical 
research, upon which I was one day congratulating 
her. She responded to me with regret in her voice: 

" Think what I might have done if I had had the 
full training in Classics and Mathematics! I am 
thinking seriously of stopping to get it." And I 
replied warningly: " At your peril! " 



110 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Eespect for " fundamental knowledge," is sound 
theory certainly; but when a soul's individuality is 
strong enough to boldly take its own flight, it will 
usually have magnetic force enough to trail after 
it the things fundamentally necessary to its particu- 
lar course. The stronger the soul, the greater its 
longing, " Oh, to be let alone! " " If it were not for 
schools, I believe I could get an education! " once 
moaned a young woman to me, and I knew exactly 
what she meant. 

A small boy-friend of ours had been in school 
only about half, or at most two-thirds of the school 
year, for two successive years, and yet had kept 
steadily on with his class. Never idle, yet without 
regular lessons, the four or six months of his vaca- 
tion time had been largely spent in pursuing his 
own heart's desires with intelligent track-clearing 
ahead of his schemes, on the part of his parents. 
After one of his returns to school, his being able to 
" catch up " and continue on with the class, was 
ascribed to his being "an absorptive boy/' and of 
his having a " reasoning mind." The teacher ex- 
claimed with enthusiasm mingled with regret: 
"Where would he have been if he had been kept 
regularly at school ? " 

"Possibly it is because of his irregularities and 



INDIVIDUALITY 111 

his seasons of free activities, and not in spite of 
them, that he is i absorptive and has a reasoning 
mind/" we suggested. But that faithful teacher 
knew arithmetic. Ten times one is ten; ten months 
of school means ten times as much as one month! 

It cannot be too often reiterated that the main 
aim in Education is not to get into the child's head 
the " content " of a curriculum, but through the use 
of the curriculum to see that he gains a love of its 
" content," and ■ the power which comes of it, — 
individual power to think, to act, to feel, to mas- 
ter, — to be self-directing. Therefore we can often 
afford to pause in our mad career of cramming, and 
(President Eliot again), "guide the training of 
every mind on those subjects which it most affects." 
All this is not argument for keeping children from 
school, but for requiring the schools to provide more 
sympathetically for individual culture; for more 
spontaneous self -activity; with less of lesson-recit- 
ing and marking. The fact that we may generalise 
in the treatment of the bodies of human beings, 
should not lead to the error of believing that we 
may do the same thing with their souls. How 
charming the dual nature of childhood! On one side 
so healthily animal! How confidently we may pro- 
vide for bodily needs ! Minimum of clothing, maxi- 



112 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

mum of sleep, unstinted supply of simple, nourish- 
ing food and free outdoor play, absence of care and 
responsibility, — the same alike for all! But for the 
soul of a child! Here even angels may fear to 
tread. Away with confidence and conceit! Be 
humble now; a child is with us! an embryo, — we 
know not what. Let us look into the eyes and heart 
of him and inquire, and obey him. Let us proceed 
cautiously, gently, and, to quote Hanus once more, 
" Let us press on more and more in the direction of 
insisting upon the clearing away of the thick under- 
brush of unnecessary i knowledge,' to make place for 
real knowledge and individual training." 

Oh, the swift coming of the millennium for child- 
hood, when we but get to an understanding of the 
sacredness of the impulses with which Mother 
Nature starts off each one of her children when it 
enters our world! 

" Les hiboux ne peuvent pas voir le vol des 
aigles!" "Owls cannot even see the flight of 
eagles." A fine proverb, that! 

Must we, then, clip the wings of the big bold bird, 
to force him to perch upon a branch and hoot beside 
the owl? Heaven forbid! Or must we nag and 
boost the dear little owlet, torture him with arti- 
ficial wings, in vain attempt to make him follow the 



INDIVIDUALITY 113 

eagle's flight? Again, Heaven forbid! Let us 
strive for faith to allow each individual soul, child, 
or adult, to 

" press bold to the tether's end, 
Allotted to this life's intelligence." 

"Owls cannot even see the flight of eagles!" 
Yet give the owl his free opportunity; and let the 
eagle soar! 

We may all be humble; many a brilliant youth 
proves but a flash in the pan. 

We may all be hopeful; Anthony Trollope, the 
fool of the family, became its star! 



VII 

BIG THINGS 

(Versus Galley- Slave Work) 

"As small things hurt the sight, so do small matters him 
that is intent upon them."— Plutarch. 

11 Oh ! but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, 
Or what's a heaven for ? " 

—Browning. 

Were I to locate a child ideally during those first, 
fresh, eager years, when he is feeling for and find- 
ing his wings, I would have everything ahout him 
Big. He should live in a Big house, with Big 
rooms, in the centre of a Big horizon, with the Big 
infinite sky above him, and when possible the Big 
sea before him. 

When Walter Scott was a mere infant he was sent 
up to the hills with the shepherds to lie all day 
wrapped in a sheepskin, in the hope that this treat- 
ment would help his lameness. Some one has ad- 
vanced the idea, that his having thus lived so much 
in a wide horizon at this formative period of his 
life, did much toward giving him his large sweeping 

114 



BIG THINGS 115 

way of looking at things. Be that as it may, if you 
find that yon are wearing yonrself ont over vexa- 
tious trifles, are magnifying mole-hills into peace- 
killing mountains, go up to the top of a hill and 
look at the world in its Bigness. When you come 
down your real troubles will not be gone; they can- 
not be gotten rid of so easily, but you will be aston- 
ished at the minute size to which your obstreperous 
mole-hills have shrunk. You will find yourself in a 
condition to manage your real troubles with clearer 
judgment. 

Have you not noticed that children are nearly 
always " good " out of doors ? especially children of 
nervous temperament? There is much truth in the 
saying that we ought every day to look upon a fine 
painting, hear a fine song, and climb to the top of a 
hill. Translated, that means that we need Bigness 
and Beauty for soul-food, and that we need soul- 
food every day. 

Ideally, we would, then, have children spend all 
their days in the midst of Bigness and Beauty, 
which should permeate the atmosphere of all their 
activities. And what should these activities be? 
Lessons? Lessons, surely. The things to be got 
from books and study in this generation are inspir- 
ing and ennobling beyond expression, But not too 



116 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

many " lessons " in childhood; not five hours a day 
of them within imprisoning walls^ with one or two 
hours of attendant home-work! 

For the most part we would have children pass 
their days among things — real, practical things and 
doings; among boats and horses, in carpenter shop, 
machine shop, and smithy; among household af- 
fairs; in the woods with " Hiawatha's friends," and 
"brothers," and "chickens." Winters they should 
be taken to the Big city for a time, there to behold 
and wonder at, the Big Things to which man has 
attained, and to have Big thoughts upon when they 
shall have returned to their home. At an early age 
they should find introduced into their companion- 
ship, an entertaining person who talked nothing but 
French, which they would learn in the Big 
"natural" way. Three or four years later they should 
get German in the same way; Latin also, since we 
are picturing the ideal. The wise, masterful spirit 
which should be found to preside over this juvenile 
paradise, should see to it that in leisure hours and 
moments, Big characters and Big events in History, 
along with the best in Literature, Music, and Art, 
should furnish natural recreation. Always among 
Big Things! And all this alone, each by him- 
self? By no means, but always in "troops," 



BIG THINGS 117 

boys and girls together. Need of companionship 
is, perhaps, the strongest hunger of a normal 
child's spiritual life. Moreover, as Professor James 
tells ns: 

" No runner, running alone on a race-track, will 
find in his own will the power of stimulation which 
his rivalry with other runners incites, when he feels 
them at his heels, able to pass." 

I know as well as my reader knows, that I am 
indulging, fancy-free, in the purely ideal; am off, 
indeed, in Utopia again. I know, too, as well as my 
reader does, that it would be only a sentimentalist 
who would dream, for one little moment, of trying 
to bring it about that children, even in this genera- 
tion, should come into an inheritance so delightful 
as that. We hitch our wagon to a star, not because 
we hope to mount to the star, or hope to travel 
through the universe in its wake, but because, — 
well, because it's natural to the Sons of God to have 
ideals; natural that "a man's reach should exceed 
his grasp." No, that scheme of Big Things is not 
intended as a working plan for us of to-day. We 
can, at present, only forge faithfully forward with 
our children, slowly evolving our ideals, meanwhile 
giving the expansive, freedom-loving little creatures, 
as little prison and as much liberty as possible, not 



118 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

bewildering their moral and mental vision more 
than we must. 

If we see a child tumbling comfortably about, 
intent upon some interesting thought or deed,, we 
indulge in philosophisings on the picturesqueness of 
the " graceful abandon of childhood." Why is our 
satisfaction not multiplied by thirty, if thirty chil- 
dren are thus disposed? But imagine to yourself 
the creepy horrors of any teacher of to-day, if even 
a faint suggestion of such " disorder " were made 
for any study-hour of her class! They look so fine 
and orderly, set up in strait- jacket chairs! even 
though we know they are longing for limb-stretch- 
ing freedom! Yet we need not thus to restrict 
children and dominate them, — not if we work all 
together, we and they. The necessity of this 
"discipline" is simply the result of our giving 
them to understand from the very start that we 
are educating them, when we should be standing 
by to help them in educating themselves. This 
sounds Utopian and theoretical, yet every one who 
knows children well, knows how responsive they are 
to such methods. We may have it with them which- 
ever way we elect. But we are fools, all of us, in 
our conceit of believing that we know how to 
" manage " children without their own cooperation! 



BIG THINGS 



119 



It is my belief, and I am sure that I am by no means 
alone in it, that the intimations and impulses and 
desires of a rightly-born, rightly-received, rightly- 
environed child are, nearly all of them, wholesome, 
upward-striving, and to be reverenced. What in 
them seems bad, will, if closely examined into, turn 
out to be tentative searchings after experience and 
self-expression. Their whole activity is the result 
of an unconscious reaching out after a true adjust- 
ment of self with its surroundings. The infant, for 
instance, will, for but a marvellously short time take 
its food with eager animal enjoyment, absorbingly 
employed in illustrating that " first law of Nature " 
which is self-preservation. Woe be to us if we do not 
recognise dawning affection when the child refuses 
to enjoy food greedily, which is served with frowns 
instead of smiles! when the tiny hand is stretched 
toward us in mute appeal for comradeship. Woe to 
us, and to him, if we do not then and there begin 
to say "we" with him; to let him have from that 
time forth, a sense of companionship with us. 

To say nothing of the relation of many children 
with their parents, what is that of most pupils with 
their teachers? Acuteness of skill in " getting out " 
of all they can on the part of the pupils; the 
teachers, meanwhile, wearing themselves out in 



120 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

faithful endeavour to pull their reluctant charges 
along rapidly in order to keep them up to the 
grade requirements; — a mild half -recognised con- 
flict always between them. "Is the task done? if 
it isn't you must stay after school until it is! " when 
it should be: " Oh, couldn't you do it? I will try 
and get a chance to help you after school! " 

What proportion of school work, I ask you, may 
honestly be called hearty cooperation of pupil and 
teacher? Yet Childhood is capable of it! Of noth- 
ing in all my experience and observation do I feel 
surer than of that! But we have wandered again 
toward Utopia; let us return; Utopia is not " practi- 
cal!" 

" What knowledge is of most worth? " asks 
Spencer and has but one answer to his question, viz. 
" Science," " Science," always " Science," so you will 
see that we shall have in this chapter, but one only 
answer to the question, which will be ever and 
always, " Big Things." 

Turn with me now if you will to page 57; look 
once more upon our curriculum and ponder; and re- 
flect that " Children need not a prison but occupa- 
tion." Beading one day the Personal Recollections of 
Mary Somerville, by her daughter, I came suddenly 
upon the following paragraph. I was for the mo- 



BIG THINGS 121 

ment transfixed with surprise and delight; I read 
and re-read it, gloating npon it. 

"When we were very young she taught us her- 
self for a few hours daily; when our lessons were 
over, we always remained in the room with her, 
learning grammar, arithmetic, or some such plague 
of childhood." 

Delicious faith of a mother! " When our lessons 
were over"! What, then, were those "lessons" 
without arithmetic, or grammar, or other " plagues 
of childhood"? How simply this fact is recorded 
by her daughter along with the others! How naive 
the unconsciousness that she is here setting forth 
the very central principle of ideal curriculum- 
making! How incidental are the " plagues of child- 
hood," grammar, arithmetic and the rest, to which 
we devote nearly the whole of those eight long 
years! What, I ask again, could have been the 
" lessons " which Mary Somerville taught her chil- 
dren during those "few hours daily"? How we 
should like to know! We may be sure they were 
Big Things of some sort, that Arithmetic and 
Grammar should be so cavalierly brushed aside. We 
can only surmise; — her beloved Astronomy, per- 
haps; possibly Spencer's Science; the easy and 
beautiful things of Physics and Chemistry; the 



122 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

fascinating problems of measurements and con- 
structive and observational Geometry; History, 
Literature, and Music, surely. We may be certain 
that those lessons had to do with things high and 
noble, Mary Somerville herself being high-minded 
and noble. 

Deep-deep-rooted is this old custom of believing 
that our children must spend their days fiddle-dee- 
dee-ing among little things! Doing "galley-slave 
work " when, self-respecting and masterful, they 
should be about their Father's business. This wrong 
will never be righted till Parents awaken to the 
seriousness of it, and join Pedagogues in the scheme 
of education. Pedagogues are wise; — wise in 
theory and in zeal; Parents, too, are wise, — wise in 
affection and in the instinct born of it. We will 
not debate which is the wiser wisdom. Both are 
needed. 

A young friend of ours who had lived mostly 
innocent of school life, and rather largely and 
freely, not wishing at the time of her entering col- 
lege, to study Greek, set herself the task of prepar- 
ing herself without a teacher, in the substitute 
mathematics of the Harvard entrance requirements. 
Any one familiar with the old-time double-duty 
penalty for any departure from the regular, laid- 



BIG THINGS 123 

down scheme, will easily understand that she had 
given herself no small task. One day she settled 
comfortably into an easy-chair and began to read 
her Analytic Geometry exactly as though she were 
reading a story. She went through to the end with- 
out doing an example. When she had finished, she 
exclaimed, slangily to be sure, but emphatically: 
" There! I wanted to know where I was at! " Then 
she rolled up her sleeves and went into it. That 
was her " Natural Method." And a fine one it was, 
— a method with Bigness to it. And at ten, this 
girl had been among the " owls " in arithmetic! 

Even very young children get an added self- 
respect by being given big conceptions of things. 
Everybody knows that the Kindergarten is our in- 
stitution perfect; yet it may be safe for me to utter an 
expression of my fear, that this " perfected-system " 
business is taking much out of the life of Froebel's 
beautiful, spontaneous kindergarten, by not letting 
in largeness enough, — by fussing. There is no 
record that the joyous, spontaneous Froebel had a 
half-hour-period programme for three and four- 
year-old children, to which he strictly adhered, as do 
the kindergartners of to-day. It is difficult to 
imagine him abiding by one. 

One day, visiting a "crack" kindergarten of 



124 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Boston, we became interested in an eager little boy 
who was " hurrying np " to get his card all sewed 
before schedule time brought on the next thing. 
He didn't succeed, and he begged to be allowed to 
" finish it all the same." " Oh, no, Charlie, not to- 
day; we are going to form a ring and play now," 
said the kindergartner, "you can finish it next 
time; " which the child knew would not be for three 
days, for doesn't every one know that " occupa- 
tions " all come twice a week in kindergarten? The 
refusal had been given kindly enough, but with 
a mild surprise that Charlie hadn't caught on to the 
schedule of things. Oliver Twist had asked for 
more! 

"But I don't want to play," persisted Charlie, 
now a little snarlily, " I want to finish this." 

Firmly but gently the kindergartner laid the 
work in the box with the other cards, and the child 
went discontentedly to play(?). Play, you may 
recall, is defined as " voluntary activity." The boy 
was listless and indifferent during the entire period 
of games. He was going to play all the afternoon! 
He didn't care if he had had the allotted twenty-five 
minutes of card-sewing; he wanted to finish that 
little bit on his card and take it home to his mother! 
How different the points of view were in the affair! 



BIG THINGS 125 

From the kindergartener's point of view the boy- 
was doing his period of card-sewing; the child was 
simply making a pretty thing to carry home to his 
mother. He had been given a little thing to do; he 
was doing a Big Thing. 

It is like that all along the line through the 
kindergarten, primary school, grammar school, and 
to a less degree, possibly, in the High School. It is 
murderous always to have work chopped off just 
when interest is thoroughly aroused, and the metal 
red hot for being wrought upon! Only to be set 
pounding upon some cold metal, and all just because 
the gong has sounded to announce the close of a 
period! 

"Your Committee/' announces our before-men- 
tioned Committee of Fifteen, " recommends recita- 
tions of fifteen minutes in length in the first and 
second years, of twenty minutes in length in the 
third and fourth years, and of twenty-five minutes 
in the fifth and sixth years, and of thirty minutes in 
the seventh and eighth." 

Now what has Psychology to say to that? Where 
is GL Stanley Hall, to prove to us by tabulations, 
lines, and curves, that some children can give atten- 
tion longer than others? and that some subjects 
will hold attention longer than others? What 



126 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

psychological law is explicit enough to bear us 
out in rigidity of that sort? Children have a 
craving, — and it is a noble one, and an educational 
crime not to satisfy it, — to do completed, well- 
rounded work, or, at least, to go on up to their limit 
in attempts to do it. This heading a child off from 
his own strong self -direc tings; and fitting him to 
schedules, tends most wretchedly to initiate the child 
into the " pernicious habit of being satisfied with in- 
adequate and partial results, at an early age, an age 
when by nature he delights in adequate and full ones." 
Pedagogues and Parents, get ye alike, into the 
leading-strings of your children. Don't knock the 
stick-to-it-iveness out of them, if, perchance, 
Nature has at the start endowed them with 
it! Later on we shall all be groaning that the great 
evil among them is lack of concentration. And 
why shouldn't it be ? Haven't we been inducing it ? 
If you give a child a story to write, and you see him. 
leaning on his elbows, staring into space with rapt 
look, don't tell him to " hurry up " because the 
period is nearly over! Nor don't make him go off 
to gymnastics, or even to geography, if he is so 
interested that he wants to finish. Two halves 
don't make a whole in education, unless they are 
halves of the same thing. Nor don't make him 



BIG THINGS 127 

write his first copy "neatly and in his best hand- 
writing." I wouldn't like you to see the first copy 
of this chapter! Have you ever seen a facsimile 
of the first copy of Dickens or of any other author 
of note? Give the little embryo author as good a 
show as his grown-up fellow-authors. But we are 
always expecting children to do what we couldn't, 
by any hook or crook, do ourselves! 

We may safely trust the instinct of children for 
Big Things, and give them a long rope of freedom 
in their activities. 

" A desire for knowledge is the natural feeling of 
mankind; and every human being whose mind is not 
debauched will be willing to give all that he has to 
get knowledge." 

So writes the enthusiastic, knowledge-loving Dr. 
Johnson. It is with regret, however, that we must 
recall the fact that Johnson did not discover, in his 
brief and unhappy period of schoolmastering, that 
this is even truer of children than of men and 
women. " Generation of Artificial Stupidity in 
Schools " kept the fact under a total eclipse in his 
day, as it does nearly in ours. But the fact is a 
fact all the same, provided, — and the provision is a 
necessary one, — that the knowledge is real knowl- 
edge, and is the particular knowledge which is fitted 



128 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

to the child's wants. This last provision is the one 
which looks after the Individuality so strongly 
pleaded for in another chapter. Drudgery, to be 
spontaneous and cheerful, must he performed for 
the getting or the making of some Big Thing, big 
in the eyes of the worker. A boy will not patiently 
pick up and carry stones as a task. But how your 
little Ben Franklins will excite wonder, tiring 
themselves out building a miniature wharf! Watch, 
then, for what big thing your child has ambition, 
then set him to work on the road toward that thing. 

" The Youth," says Thoreau, " gets together his 
material to build a bridge to the moon; or perhaps 
a palace or a temple on earth; and at length the 
middle-aged man comes along and concludes to 
build a woodshed with it." 

What matter if ambition and ardour do cool as we 
get older? Let not our youngsters lose hope while 
they are young. Let each new generation have its 
try; its own hopes and experiences; only thus is 
possible the finest moulding of character. Moreover, 
an occasional one does succeed in building his 
bridge to the moon. And, indeed, that is the best 
sort of mind which keeps up the hope of it till 
death. Let us live bravely and die game. 

We can, I believe, do nothing better for our 



BIG THINGS 129 

children than to dismiss the "plagues of child- 
hood" with a minimum of attention, and to keep 
the tracks clear, ahead of their own childish schemes 
and enterprises. This advice, be it understood, 
must he heeded with discretion, even the necessary 
minimum of the " plagues of childhood," making up 
a large and troublesome list. What I am pleading 
for, is that we shall err on the side of indulgence; 
shall give the children as large scope of freedom for 
their own chosen activities as our wider view can, 
by stretch of judgment, permit to them. 

Freedom! Magical word! How it has set throb- 
bing the pulses of nations and of individuals! The 
history of the world is but a history of fights for 
Freedom, and who loves and needs Freedom more 
than children? And who fights harder and more 
persistently for it? Let them have more of it! 
Freedom the path; Truth the Goal! 

To be given Freedom, and taught self-reliance! 

To be given Freedom, and taught the great gulf 
between liberty and license! 

To be given Freedom, along with health and op- 
portunity! 

Then may we accomplish Big Things! True for 
ourselves, even more true for our children. 

Freedom is, indeed, the biggest of the Big Things 



130 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

which we should covet for our children, even as it is 
the one first thing which we, ourselves, think we 
must have. It may be thought that we do give 
children Freedom. Americans are accused of giv- 
ing them too much of it. We shall all agree, per- 
haps, that we give them too much license, but let us 
frankly allow ourselves to see how very small is the 
amount of true Freedom which Civilisation allots to 
childhood. " Civilisation is the rock that man has 
split upon," writes some one, and just missed 
being a bit of a genius, for not having written 
" childhood " instead of " man." Civilisation is the 
rock that childhood splits upon! Architecture, Art, 
Music, Science, Society and Social Institutions, 
Eeligion, — all these are the achieved triumphs of 
man's past upward climbing, his present ideals as 
far as he can get them expressed. They furnish the 
natural environment and soul-food for cultivated 
Man. But how little of it is the ideal of Childhood! 
How little of it furnishes natural environment or 
soul-food for Childhood! Normal children, not too 
early initiated and rendered blase, shirk about all 
they can of it. 

Civilisation, however, should be infinite inspira- 
tion for children to behold; to go to for sips and 
tastes, to get food for reflection from, and to serve 



BIG THINGS 131 

as ideals in the formation of their thoughts and 
character. To be able to pass their character-form- 
ing years within range of Civilisation should, in- 
deed, be a tremendous impulsive force in their 
development. It is only adult unwisdom, " adult 
egotism " again, that makes children " split " upon 
Civilisation. Why can we not have enough wisdom 
to see to it that children have the benefits of 
Civilisation, even while living their actual life close 
to Nature and simplicity, each drinking in from the 
grand ideals about him, only what he can assimilate, 
we having courage not to try to force the rest upon 
him. 

No, we are not yet ready to give children this 
priceless privilege. From the moment a child 
comes into the world his Freedom is mortgaged to 
the process of fitting him to Civilisation. We don't 
mean to let him go through those dreadful Culture 
Epochs if we can help it. Go look upon the layette 
over which the expectant mother hovers so fondly! 
The farther from simplicity the more she gloats. 
She stands before the store-window display of styles 
distingue and chic Parisian get-ups of Civilisation 
for the covering of its tiny young, yearning to pass 
unmolested through their claw-and-club stages of 
existence! And the bazaars, filled with completed 



132 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

toys, marvellously calculated to stultify any dawn- 
ing faculty of invention, and to prevent the develop- 
men of childish powers! 

Alas! We are wandering toward Utopia again; 
this time by contrast. We must relentlessly re- 
turn. 

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness"! 
Life we protect for our little ones; of the delights 
of Liberty they know little. As for the Pursuit of 
Happiness, it is we who pursue it for them, — con- 
tinually and always. We have yet to instruct our- 
selves in the art of allowing them to come upon it 
naturally and unconsciously, by the sheer force of 
their own efforts and activities. 

What, then? What practical lesson for us? 
This, — that we should ever give children as high 
and wide a lookout about them as is consistent with 
a simple unstimulated life. Let things run along 
as much as possible in currents and sweeps, not 
fussing. Left to themselves, children naturally 
generalise, naturally think big breezy thoughts. 
Doing things largely induces largeness of thinking; 
and doing and thinking largely is but liberal-minded- 
ness and generosity of soul, which we so much ad- 
mire; is, indeed, one of the most distinguishing ele- 
ments of a fine character. 



BIG THINGS 133 

"I have generally found/' observes Pestalozzi, 
" that high and noble thoughts are indispensable for 
developing wisdom and firmness." 

High and noble thoughts grow out of high and 
noble and Big doings. Let us see how it is cus- 
tomary to regard this thing: " The conclusion is 
reached," sets forth our much-quoted Curriculum, 
" that learning to read and write should be the lead- 
ing study of the pupil in his first three or four years 
of school." Pedagogic, not parental wisdom! 

Would that there might spring up from some- 
where, another Mary Somerville, who should head a 
committee of Fifteen Mary-Somerville-minded 
Pedagogues and Parents, to give us a counter-cur- 
riculum! 

It never seemed to me much matter how early a 
child learns to read and write. Provided that it is 
learned easily and voluntarily, and does not dis- 
place knowledge of things, the earlier the better. 
Ability to read swiftly and intelligently, — to read 
as you breathe, unconsciously and absorbingly, is 
the very backbone of a good education, is, in itself, 
a good education. Too few there are who have ac- 
quired the art, except in the devouring of fiction. 

Nevertheless, to believe that in the business of 
conducting a child to the full stature of a man, the 



134 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

learning to read and write should be the " leading 
study" for the first and best years, — that should 
seem to Parents the worst kind of heresy. These 
are the years which give the key-note to life; the 
years in which those studies should be the leading 
ones, which will train little ones from the very start, 
to observe accurately and infer justly; to love largely 
and to serve. They should be studies which bestir 
conscience, and educate it to demand implicit obedi- 
ence. In a word, while all studies should be charac- 
ter-forming ones through the entire course, they 
should be absolutely the chief ones at the beginning, 
which is the source of the stream of after life. 
Surely primer-reading and handwriting, this small 
work of tool-making, is elevated to a position far 
above its merits! These should be run in as inci- 
dentals, as things which must be done, if one means to 
be decently educated. 

In conclusion, let us look a little upon this being 
who is given into our charge, this being which, from 
very birth, so loves Freedom and Bigness! We will 
pass by the bonbon-craving, finery-admiring, party- 
going, self-centred, indulged, critical, almost cynical, 
spoiled child of society, and " Civilisation," and 
" adult egotism." It is the spontaneous, self -forget- 
ting, eager, soul-hungry, natural, unspoiled child, 



BIG THINGS 135 

of whom we are speaking. We ought to feel a sense 
of awe in his presence. 

Chamberlain, in The Child, a Study of the Evolu- 
tion of Man, quotes Goethe as saying: 

"If children grew up according to early indica- 
tions, we should have nothing but geniuses; and all 
the play of environment since the race began has 
not removed the fact emphasised by Schopenhauer, 
'Every child is, to a certain extent, a genius, and 
every genius to a certain extent a child/ " 

" Genius," says Mr. H. Cooly, " is that aptitude for 
greatness that is born in a man." We should repeat 
that to ourselves again and again when we are in the 
presence of children. " Genius is that aptitude for 
greatness that is born in a man." We get such bril- 
liant glimpses of this genius all through childhood! 
But it is so delicate, so evanescent, that it eludes the 
enticements of this life and slips little by little away, 
and we grow into manhood and womanhood hope- 
lessly lacking it! Perhaps it is like the first dew on 
the flowers in early morning, not intended to remain 
through the glare of the midday. Yet should we 
not try to keep our hold on as much of it as we may, 
as a delight for our workaday world? 

"Gifted people seem to conserve their youth," 
says G. Stanley Hall with truth. He asserts also 



136 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

that "it is certainly one of the marks of genius 
that the plasticity and spontaneity of adolescence 
persist into maturity." And Chamberlain takes 
some pains to bring to our mind that, not only is 
genius akin to childhood, but in its ways and means 
is also similar to the latter. But we smother this 
genius, this aptitude for greatness; we swamp it with 
galley-slave work. The affinity of genius and 
childhood, in my way of thinking, lies in this, that 
they both love the simple, elemental, real things of 
life, and that they love them so insistently that they 
must have them; they are the very necessity of their 
living. And these simple, elemental things are the 
Big Things! All things noble are simple and — Big; 
complexity is commonplace; it satisfies only the ordi- 
nary mind. 

"As small letters hurt the sight, so do small 
matters him that is intent upon them." Let us 
heed Plutarch and keep our children intent upon 
Big Things. 

" What your heart thinks is great, is great. The 
soul's emphasis is always right." 



VIII 

THE METHOD OF LIMITS 

" Attention should be called to the desirability of introduc- 
ing the Method of Limits."— Harvard College Entrance Re- 
quirements in Geometry. 

One is happy to recognise his ideas wherever he 
finds them, and this one is clothed to my liking and 
by good authority. " Attention should be called to 
the desirability of introducing the Method of 
Limits." What, then, is this " Method of Limits "? 

St. Paul discovered what it was for him when he 
stopped kicking against the pricks. If he were but 
instructed in it, what a boon it might prove to the 
bumble-bee which is, at this very moment, bruising 
his poor little head against my window-pane, in the 
vain hope of attaining freedom in the sunny fields 
beyond! For ourselves we interpret it to mean, 
that when we have come to the end of our rope in 
any one direction, it is folly to fall to marking time, 
fondly imagining we are still advancing. Eather 
let us recognise our Limit. 

It is an important method to understand, this 
137 



138 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Method of Limits, in order to rightly construe the 
chapter on Big Things, — or any other chapter on 
education. " Big " is a relative term; what to you 
is a little thing is often a Big Thing to your child. 
The natural love which children have for Big 
Things brings them continually up against this 
Method of Limits. They feel themselves equal to 
far bigger things than they can really compass. 
It is well to let them discover their own Limit. 
The child who conceives a Big Thing, starts in on 
it and proceeds up to his Limit, has done far more 
toward developing a commanding character, than 
the one who travels over that same bit of road with 
no goal in view, but does it as a task given out by 
his teacher. 

Our little fellow, when very small, long indeed 
before he learned to write, got the knack of spelling 
out words on the type-writer, phonetically of course, 
and could set down his ideas in a manner quite in- 
telligible. When he could not induce us to admit 
that they were " correct," he stoutly maintained 
that his way was just as good as our way; writing 
is meant to be read! and his could be! What more 
could you reasonably wish? Lest you should not 
believe me, I do not dare to tell how young he was, 
when he produced the following curious specimens: 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 139 

" jojwoshtn " (George Washington); "klarudiki" 
(Clara Dickey); " osaksahosgutloos " (0 sakes, a 
horse got loose!) and the like. Once when he felt 
naughty he said resentfully, "I'll write a bad 
word! " and ran off to the type-writer. He soon re- 
turned, holding his breath at the audacity of what 
he had done, and held up a big sheet of paper with 
the one word upon it, " devul." When he was four 
years old and had learned to separate the words, 
and had acquired a little more skill generally, he 
announced that he was going to write a book " with 
lots of chapters," and forthwith produced the fol- 
lowing table of contents : 

"1. a Spanish wo-bot (war-boat) 
2. a man tokt when ded (talked) 

The merykn flag (American) 

an 8 leggid spider 

a singing lump of dirt 

sum wirds of a littl song 

doo fish gro 
The little fellow did a vast amount of thinking on 
each of these subjects before he accepted it as a 
chapter-head. But baby ambition had found its 
limit. He said thoughtfully: 

"I'll write 'em all perhaps some day; that last 
one I've got to study up." 



140 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

It is not unalloyed fickleness that makes children 
go from one big scheme to another. Nature's 
Method of Limits is ever relentlessly restraining 
them. The child comes to the end of his knowl- 
edge and judgment and skill in one direction, and 
must, perforce, begin all over again, changing the 
direction of his headlong activity, even as he wan- 
ders a short distance from his home, then returns to 
wander off in another direction, but never venturing 
far. His limited, but ever increasing skill, is an 
always lengthening tether of his energy, keeping 
him, not in a circle, but in a spiral of activities. 

Our little lad, at nine and a half, had at school 
four periods a week of drawing and manual training. 
I pause here to say that if this boy plays a rather 
prominent part in this book, I can only plead that 
there are several reasons why he does illustrate it 
rather naturally. Very likely on account of his 
own and his parents' mutual lack of persistence in 
regard to his school attendance, there seems always 
to be some ready excuse for his never getting more 
than a few weeks of schooling every year. Secondly, 
it may be that, like the celebrated Rousseau, we do 
not prove ourselves equal to both the theory and 
practice of educational ideas; at all events, the boy 
receives an unusual amount of protection in Liberty 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 141 

and the Pursuit of Happiness, and keeps up a series 
of animated illustrations of what free, spontaneous 
childhood is likely to evolve. 

As before stated, he had four periods a week at 
school for drawing and manual training. When 
asked what they did during that period, he replied a 
little resentfully, " She talks to you half an hour, 
then gives you ten minutes to do it"; which re- 
minded us of an opinion which he once gave that 
the way to study geography was "to go there." 
Well, in consequence of having so little time for 
doing, the boy begged to have a duplicate outfit for 
this work at home, which was got together for 
him; — a knife, a ruler and pencil, a pair of com- 
passes, and a T square, with some small pieces of 
thin wood to work upon. 

Then business began! No time or thought for 
anything else! Match-scratchers, pencil-sharpeners, 
and the like, were turned out till they were a glut 
in the market. The compasses were the special 
fascination. He went through a variety of per- 
formances with it and then asked if we didn't know 
"some things to do with it." Of course we put 
him through the bisecting of lines, constructing of 
perpendiculars, circumscribing and inscribing of 
circles and squares and the like. He did it all 



142 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

beamingly, I give you his own original method of 
drawing a line through a given point, parallel to 
a given line. He still thinks it is simpler than the 
" regular way," and " plenty accurate enough." 

" Draw two little mountains as high as the other 
one, then draw a line across the top of 'em all." 



All this satisfied his very soul. He has not even 
yet got over the delight and wonder of trying 
to place three points not in a straight line, in 
such a position that he can't put a circle through 
them. 

One day we found his outfit, previously so ten- 
derly cared for, scattered about, neglected and for- 
gotten. Limit attained! He must have a scroll 
saw! Santa Claus brought it. " Another fellow " 
remembered that he had one that he used to be 
crazy over. He got it out, brought it over to our 
house, and set it up beside our lad's in front of the 
window of his room. For days we could never feel 
quite free from the idea that we lived under a saw- 
mill. Frames, dissected puzzles, and pictures and 
maps, were now the vogue. This craze had a longer 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 143 

run than many others, but even the scroll saw had 
to have a fall from its high first place. 

One day the lad came in and seriously counted 
his cash on hand; he must immediately have a 
clothes-line. Couldn't the kitchen-girl give him 
hers? She wasn't washing! He had some pulleys 
and things and wanted a clothes-line to go with 
them. He got together thirty-five cents and he 
and the " other fellow " went off to make the best 
bargain they could with it. They returned with 
thirty-five yards of clothes-line and the derrick acts 
began all over the house. Coming in at the front 
door, the first thing likely to greet the eye was 
something or other dangling about in upward career 
in the front hall. We stepped into his room one 
day just in time to rescue his bed, which was being 
slowly elevated toward a pulley fastened above the 
door! The derrick scheme was a short one. Pos- 
sibly it lacked the sympathy of the household! 
Scheme after scheme has followed, one to be 
dropped only to be succeeded by another. 

A healthy normal boy is never without a scheme, 
and never pursues any scheme long, before he runs 
up against his Limit, and is off again in another 
direction. A child's possibilities of achievement 
are so small! And they are made even smaller by 



144 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

the backwardness of parents in supplying them with 
tools and material and opportunity to carry on their 
schemes, being far more ready to buy them finished 
toys. It is much easier and less bothering and 
cluttering, than it is to keep a watchful eye out, 
furnishing the needful links and hints that would 
hold them enthralled longer in any given line of 
activity. So they soon come to their limit in any 
direction in which ambition or fancy impels them; 
and they are too impatient and too instinctively wise 
to be willing to do treadmill work. Anyway, who 
of us likes to do " galley-slave work "? The refusal 
to do it is but natural self-discipline. True educa- 
tion forbids our continuing to do a thing after we 
can do it; we may continue to do it from necessity, 
but not for education. When you can do one thing 
learn to do another; that's progress. 

"Patience is genius," says the proverb. So, in- 
deed, it is. And how infinitely patient and pains- 
taking the wonderful little beings are in their own 
chosen activities! 

" Patience is the virtue of asses! " says a counter 
proverb. So, indeed, it is, — in a treadmill. The 
proverbs are complementary, not contradictory. 

We should note all this in prescribing tasks. A 
child's Limit, in my opinion, is reached in any work 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 145 

or study, when he cannot longer do it with interest; 
the more I reflect and observe upon the matter the 
more I believe that we may rely upon that fact as a 
law. A child reaches his Limit from one of two 
reasons. He has arrived as far as at that time he is 
fitted to go; or, which is more often the case, be- 
cause there is no one at hand to sympathetically 
open vistas beyond on that particular road, and 
help him clear away obstacles so that he may con- 
tinue his way. And, indeed, is anything worth the 
precious hours of childhood in which interest can- 
not be aroused? Working where there is no in- 
terest means indifferent or even painful snail-pace, 
when, in another direction, it might mean the 
jubilant speed of the deer bounding over his native 
heath. 

More and more as I observe children I do believe 
that they should be led into knowledge after a 
fashion which shall draw out spontaneous interest; 
that they should not be "taught" by a teacher 
whose mind is anxiously on the term-end examina- 
tion, which is to determine whether they may go on 
to the next "grade." The relentlessly examined 
subjects should be exceedingly few and exceedingly 
elemental. All the rest, built upon these, should be 
things so enticing to the children, that they can be 



146 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

trusted to absorb and assimilate, each up to his 
Limit. And never you speer too much into their 
minds to know how much that is! Do you measure 
the air they breathe? Or the amount of food they 
eat, — if only they thrive? 

This treatment, you say, would give a vague idea 
of everything and an accurate idea of nothing. 
Quite likely. That is what they get even now. Go 
talk with them and ascertain for yourself if it is not. 
A little classmate of our lad's had been marked S 
in his recitation, when unluckily the teacher asked 
him what were some of the industries of the state 
of Maine and he replied promptly, " The manufac- 
turing of saw-teeth." He remembered that they 
manufactured something, and he got it mixed up 
with the " saw-teeth shape of the coast " ! For that 
he got his mark reduced to P. And P, you know, is 
lower than S, meaning only " pass," while S means 
"satisfactory"! 

Our own boy just missed a disgrace of that sort; 
we were reading " Miles Standish " aloud. " Noth- 
ing was heard in the room, but," — I paused to see 
if he could fill out the line from memory, which he 
did without hesitation, — " but the stripling pen of 
John Alden"! He was at home, however, and did 
not get marked down for it! His sister, several 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 147 

years older, was guilty of a similar vagueness; "I 
like So-and-so," she exclaimed earnestly, " he is so 
dastardly! He da'st to do anything under 
heavens!" 

Vagueness! Vagueness is a part of the natural 
make-up of most youth: I could present instance 
after instance of it among the youth about me at 
the present moment. 

" The meeting adjoined at 8.30/' recorded a 
bright young seventeen-year-old girl secretary, 
" and the rest of the evening was spent in socialism." 

"Did So-and-so play a solo last night?" I asked 
a young friend. 

"He played something alone," was the simple 
reply, "but Fm not a muscian, and I don't know 
whether it was a solo or not." 

We all know how much vagueness there is at all 
ages on the subject of religion. Especially are we 
certain to find it among young people. 

"Do you, can you, really and truly believe in 
eternal punishment? " asked one schoolgirl of 
another at the close of a heated argument on the 
subject. "Yes, I do; I must, because the Bible 
teaches it," was the sorrowful reply of tender- 
hearted " Sweet Sixteen," who immediately added 
joyously, " but I don't believe it will last forever! " 



148 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Childhood is, by the very nature of it, vague. So, 
too, is youth. All the correct teaching we are 
capable of will not take vagueness from childhood, 
and make it accurate. How can children learn ac- 
curately all the wonderful things in this wonderful 
world in so short a time? We do not find an 
overabundance of accuracy among our grown-up 
selves! 

A word concerning this same accuracy; it should 
always and unremittingly be encouraged, and its 
brilliancy and utility ever shown up, but I much 
doubt if there is anything at all in which we can 
reasonably require children to be absolutely accu- 
rate, except truth-telling and the multiplication 
table, and even in these, the first especially, it's 
doubtful if we may expect it. At the price of 
eternal vigilance, sympathetically turning them face 
about and setting them right when they go astray, 
we may hope to fetch them up at last to President 
Eliot's ideal of being able to " observe keenly, to 
reason soundly, and to imagine vividly." The ambi- 
tion to express themselves is very strong in young 
people, but they soon come up to their Limit of 
knowledge and experience; overstepping this Limit 
come vagueness and inaccuracy. Spencer warns us 
of the grave error which one commits when he 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 149 

"insists on putting into undeveloped minds per- 
fectly exact ideas; exactness being not only un- 
appreciated by, but even repugnant to, minds in low 
stages." 

Let me beg you to believe it, this Method of 
Limits is an important one. There is, indeed, 
"desirability of introducing it." It applies itself 
continually in the education of the young; let us see 
a little how. 

There are in nature two sorts of things, organic 
and inorganic, nearly enough denned for our pur- 
pose as things which grow and things which do not 
grow. Things to be learned, like the things of 
nature, are also of the same two kinds, those which 
will grow and those which will not. If you wish for 
a field of corn you may plant it and go about your 
other work while it grows a harvest for you; up to a 
certain point you may labour profitably upon it; 
beyond that point you cannot further assist its 
growth. You would but defeat your end if you were 
to stay by and pull at it to make it grow faster. 
But is it a stone wall that you want? You must 
stay by until the last, collecting and laying every 
stone of it. Stone walls never grow. Again, if at- 
tention be called to the beauty of the butterfly and 
the flower, the interest and delight will of themselves, 



150 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

grow to appreciation of other insects and flowers 
and of all Nature. Teach a child to count ten, and 
once interest him in the combinations of numbers, 
and his knowledge of number will grow as the days go 
on, if only a little attention is bestowed to keep up 
the incitement. Particularly in arithmetic we 
waste time lavishly on things which would grow of 
themselves if we had but faith to wait for them. 
Facts of narrative history must, on the contrary, be 
accumulated with industry; a knowledge of George 
Washington will never of itself grow into a knowl- 
edge of Queen Elizabeth or of Garibaldi. Yet what 
a fine harvest we may reap of the Philosophy of 
History by the mere fact of its growing. " Philos- 
ophy of History " is indeed nothing else than re- 
flection upon what we read, and surely we can trust 
to the growth of the powers of reflection, if we can 
trust to the growth of anything at all. And child- 
philosophy is a most beautiful thing to start grow- 
ing, and a most fascinating little force to guide or 
to follow! Our small nine^ear-old, between school 
and home, got himself filled with sympathy for the 
New England Pilgrims. One day he appeared with 
the most serious expression on his little face. He had 
produced the following, and " couldn't find any more 
words to rhyme." 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 151 

* f Those exils who came ore the waves, 
When they landed they were glad. 
And now they all lie in their graves. 
But the king of England he was mad. 
they built 
By tlio-ratowny oon thoir houoo it otood, ■ 

The line through that last verse was pathetic; it 
indicated the Limit. Tears had been ready to come 
with the sense of defeat. He is not a poet; possibly 
he is destined, as were both his parents, to a few 
defeats to find it out! His few little lines were not 
incipient poetry; they were incipient " Philosophy 
of History." Properly smiled upon and encouraged 
it will grow to its fulfilment " in years which bring 
the philosophic mind." 

Oh for the faith of Paul to plant and Apollos to 
water, and for the faith to trust in God to give the 
increase! We are afraid to "live by admiration, 
hope, and love." We shall not in this generation 
be wise enough for anything so simple as that. We 
shall, for a long time yet, believe we must teach 
children all that we want them to know. We shall 
go on for a long time yet, stupidly pulling and push- 
ing at the things which of themselves are bravely 
trying to grow in the fertile minds and hearts of 
children. Our children must suffer still some time 
longer by our " adult egotism." 



152 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

One of the most relentless forms which this pull- 
ing at growing things takes in the schools is the 
form of drill. Drill is a word in which school- 
masters have much confidence. "We learn by 
doing." So, indeed, we do. But that does not 
necessarily mean that we learn a thing by doing 
that particular thing over, and over, and over, 
again. Even the famous curriculum-makers feel 
that. 

Professor Woodward has pointed out that the 
educational effect of manual training is destroyed 
by having the pupils work for the market. " The 
first machine made is an education to its maker . . . 
the second and subsequent machines made, are only 
a matter of habit." 

Galley-slave work again! The word drill is a 
word which should be employed with caution. On 
this point we should heed such words as those of 
Commissioner Harris: 

"Especially in elementary schools is it very 
important to study the effects of arrested develop- 
ment that occur by reason of too much drill in 
arithmetic or word memorising, or any semi- 
mechanical operation, . . . under the plea of 
thoroughness." 

I have had come under my personal observa- 



THE METHOD OF LIMITS 153 

tion several cases in which I believe that brilliant 
capabilities have been deadened by excess of drill 
and memorising. Soldiers must have precision of 
drill; musicians must drill for skill of finger; 
children must drill, more or less till they can read, 
and write, and " say their tables." Up to a certain 
point " drill " is a " Natural Method/' beyond that 
point it easily becomes a first-class machine for the 
strengthening of the patience " which is the virtue 
of asses." Is not drill the function which gets us 
into a habit of doing things mechanically? But 
there are not many things we wish to do mechani- 
cally. It is, for instance, a misapplication of the 
use of drill, to expect to become good writers of 
English through drill in writing. We can, doubt- 
less, by drill, get into a way of writing a certain 
sort of correct, harmless sort of English; but if you 
hope to write forceful, vigorous, interesting English, 
first of all get your head full of clearly-defined, red- 
hot ideas, and words will gather to them as iron 
filings to a magnet. 

So, then, when we have brought children np to 
their Limit, let us not make them miserable because 
they cannot go beyond it. When they have grown a 
fair harvest of one sort, let us encourage a rotation 
of crops. How this growing capacity of a child's 



154 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

mind and the growing quality of some subjects, 
should guide in curriculum-making and in the train- 
ing of teachers! 

" Just as if one must not necessarily grow cleverer 
and taller at the same time! " cries Jean Paul. 



IX 

"NATURAL METHOD" 

And Nature, the old nurse, took 

The child upon her knee, 
Saying: " Here is a story-book 

Thy Father has written for thee. 

" Come, wander with me," she said, 

" Into regions yet untrod; 
And read what is still unread 

In the manuscripts of God." 

And he wandered away and away, 
With Nature, the dear old nurse, 

Who sang to him night and day 
The rhymes of the universe. 

And whenever the way seemed long, 

Or his heart began to fail, 
She would sing a more wonderful song, 

Or tell a more marvellous tale. 

— Longfellow. 

"N"atueal Method"! "Scientific presentation 
of the subject"! Phrases beloved of Pedagogues! 
Phrases for the Schoolmaster to conjure with! 
"Natural Method" is, perhaps, the rallying cry 
which did more than any other to rescue the schools 
155 



156 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

from the old, cramming method of "imparting 
knowledge." It is now in danger of doing more 
harm than any other. The educational world went 
stark mad over the invention of "natural" methods, 
and has not yet fully recovered its sanity. There 
was but one method of " cramming/' but of methods 
" natural/' their name is legion. Each teacher has 
his own selected, or original one. It reminds us 
of the enterprising manufacturing firm in the West, 
which could not keep up with the demand for 
" relics which came over in the Mayflower" To 
each, the best method which he can devise seems 
the natural one. 

An acquaintance of mine once had charge of a 
little orphaned niece. She was an exceedingly con- 
scientious woman and longed to devote much time 
to the education of the child, but she had little 
leisure. She took the child about with her a great 
deal, and she conceived the bright idea of having 
her learn to read and spell and to " say her tables " 
in fragments of time during their journeyings; 
" for," she reasoned, " when she gets to school she 
will easily learn to apply them." The child was 
responsive and learned these and many other things 
with eagerness, always by rote, her aunt relying on 
her getting the application of them when she should 



"natural method" 157 

go to school. Now let us see how little she had 
attained of any real knowledge. Meeting her one 
day, I asked, in the course of the conversation: 

"How long have yon lived in this world, any- 
way?" 

A look of real surprise came over the child's 
bright face as she answered slowly and wonderingly: 

" I don't know; 111 ask Auntie." 

I was interested in the child and took a little 
trouble to learn of her progress from time to time. 
After she had been in school a few weeks I asked 
her teacher how she was getting on. 

" She is a sort of wonder," the teacher exclaimed. 
" She knows her tables perfectly, but it has been 
almost impossible to make her see that they have 
anything whatever to do with her examples. In 
adding and multiplying she begins at the beginning 
of the table to find every combination she needs; 
for instance, if she wants 7x8 she recites the 7 table 
to herself till she comes to the 8. You can imagine 
how slowly she does her examples in multiplication. 
She can spell anything orally, but she had to begin 
with the very beginners in written spelling. She 
reads fluently, but has not the slightest idea what 
she is reading about." 

This was,, indeed,, an extreme case. But it em- 



158 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

phasises forcibly the central truth of the New 
Education which is, that while knowledge and the 
acquiring of it, while instruction and the fruits of 
it, are absolutely essential to a good education, they 
are not, in themselves, a good education without the 
power of manipulating and employing them. And 
no method is a " natural " one which does not 
develop this power along with the getting of the 
knowledge. In all the New Educational line of 
thought no other idea occurs more frequently or 
stands out more prominently than this one. 

" The child is not to learn science, but to dis- 
cover it," writes Eousseau. 

" Science cannot be taught; only drawn out," 
says Socrates ages earlier. And Quick puts it, " I 
do not think that the mind is benefited by galley- 
slave labour." 

It is ever the same idea; we cannot profitably 
hoard up knowledge, as the miser hoards his gold; 
it becomes real knowledge only as we use it; we ac- 
cumulate it profitably, only by applying it as we 
acquire it. 

A little friend of ours, a dozen years of age, 
began the study of Latin a short time ago. We 
were greatly disappointed, in looking over his text- 
book, to discover that he was to approach the 



"natural method" 159 

language through the grammar exclusively, after 
the old-fashioned way. The author dwells honestly 
in the Introduction, on the necessity of the 
" thoroughness of the memory work, and the learn- 
ing of paradigms, rather than the reading of many 
sentences." The book consistently starts the be- 
ginners off by having them commit to memory all 
the chief inflections, the declensions of nouns, pro- 
nouns, and adjectives, and the conjugations of all 
four kinds of verbs, and even some of the excep- 
tions; all this with very, very sparing illustration of 
their uses in the language itself. Divest yourself of 
maturity and prejudice if you can, become a child 
again, and look with a child's eye upon the following 
paradigm given you to memorise with its " funny " 
pronunciations. 





Singular. 




Plural. 




Nom. 


is 


ea 


id 


ei, ii 


ese 


ea 


Gen. 


eius 


eius 


eius 


eorum 


earum 


eorum 


Dat. 


ei 


ei 


ei 


eis, iis 


eis, iis 


eis, iis 


Ace. 


eum 


earn 


id 


eos 


eas 


ea 


Abl. 


eo 


ea 


eo 


eis, iis 


eis, iis 


eis, iis 



You have half a dozen sentences to illustrate its 
significance and then you proceed to learn more and 
more of the same sort. I do not pretend that 
children cannot learn such things. A good many 



160 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

children toss them off with comparative ease, some 
even with a parrot-like kind of pleasure; but it is 
my experience and observation that it is largely 
amusement in tongue-rattling; that when they come 
to apply it all as knowledge, they do it much as the 
little girl did her multiplication tables, — " say 'em 
till you think you've come to the one you think you 
want." It is the antiquated method of our youth. 
It is almost a marvel to me that in this day a book 
like that should find a publisher! We ought to be 
further on in the progress of educational ideals. I 
learned Latin in that way with the reverent trust 
of youth that I was doing a fine thing and doing it 
the only way. I can to-day con over at your call, 
like a well-trained parrot, the synoposes of the verbs 
of all the conjugations in any person and number 
you shall choose; decline nouns and adjectives to 
your liking; and recite lists of prepositions and con- 
junctions. But as for reading Latin — well, I 
never do it for pleasure, although I have several 
times parsed and analysed a Latin sentence without 
knowing its meaning. 

Dr. Edward Everett Hale writes: 

" I am quite clear that I went through the Latin 
school with the distinct feeling that Adams' Gram- 
mar stated the eternal truth with regard to the 



"natural method" 161 

language, and that Cicero and the rest of them had 
to adapt themselves to it." 

I well know that opinion is divided among the 
competent, regarding methods of teaching Latin. 
And far be it from me to presume to say that this 
method or that one is the best one. I am not a 
Pedagogue, I am a Parent. But from a Parent's 
point of view I can discover not one grain of wisdom 
in teaching anything under Heaven in so uninterest- 
ing and unnatural a way. Nor is it any wonder that 
our children must " grind " so fiercely over Latin 
to creditably pass their examinations, and that then 
nearly all of them drop it forever. 

No doubt, from some pedagogical point of view, 
such methods may be argued to be " easy " and 
" natural " ones. First learn the principles, then 
apply them! So simple! From the point of view 
of the child it can scarcely escape being pure jargon. 
The ordinary child will learn anything he's given, 
then go play and think no more about it if it doesn't 
appeal to him. We should not take advantage of 
his trustfulness. The child whose nature is a 
scholarly one will seek at the very outset for crumbs 
of real knowledge, for a glimpse of the language 
itself! Children have a natural aversion to hoard- 
ing; to hoarding anything, knowledge least of all. 



162 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

They like to use a thing the minute they get 
it. No hoarding-up method can be a natural 
one. 

It runs strongly and continually in my head that 
there is no one "Natural Method" for teaching 
anything; that a combination of all methods is the 
most natural method; and that most often the pupil 
himself should be allowed to make the combination. 
It is most earnestly to be desired, indeed, that our 
children be allowed, as far as possible, to go forward 
each by his own " Natural Method." The best sort 
of mind travels toward the discovery or apprecia- 
tion of a fact, on its own self -laid track, and is apt 
to " go it blind " on any other. Children should be 
early encouraged to lay their own track to any 
desired end. This seems particularly true in 
Science and Mathematics, but is also true in other 
subjects. 

" The prime obstacle to our doing the best that 
might be done for the child's education is adult 
egotism. The shadow of ourselves obscures the 
child," writes Patterson Du Bois. Many a " stupid " 
child has come out bright when freed from the 
shackles forged upon him by our egotism. We 
should be a little shy of " natural " methods; 
should make sure they are really Nature's method 



"natural method" 163 

and not the " Natural Method " of some particular 
mind. We once visited an Indian Eeservation in 
Nova Scotia. The French, from the very start, have 
always dealt in more loving fashion with the Indians 
than we have. They have never had a " Century of 
Dishonour," and these Indians were great pets. In 
answer to our inquiry as to what they did for a 
living, the people there told us that they made all 
sorts of " Indian remedies " from herbs during the 
summer, and went to the cities to sell them in the 
winter. "And are the medicines really good for 
anything? " we asked incredulously. " Oh, they 
are probably harmless," was the laughing reply! 
Eeflections were in order upon the enormous sale of 
Indian remedies in " The States "! Indians live so 
close to Nature, you know! It is unnecessary to 
point our moral. The wares of " Natural Method " 
venders are not always certain to be so fortunate as 
to be " harmless." Even in small things we want our 
children's work to have, at last, that quality. 

Our nine-year-old boy's young, enthusiastic 
teacher, wishing to help the children in studying 
their spelling lessons, directed them to write all 
the words five times, and all the hard ones ten times, 
and pass them in to her. Our boy was quite dis- 
turbed. Monotony is death to him; it is to any one. 



164 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 



He had various ways of conquering his list; for 
instance, yesterday he did it in the following man- 




Ittfridtdaa* 










ner: with his left eye closed he shrewdly scrutinised 
the list, then hunted up some one to read him the 
words; above is a facsimile of the form in which he 
brought them to us to be corrected. As penalty for 



^NATURAL METHOD" 



165 



the misspelled words he went through the perform- 
ance of a " pailful of churches/' and a " chestful of 
expeditions "; all of which pleased him greatly. Now 
after the five hours of school and an afternoon of 
hard outdoor play, a boy's mind is not in order for 





harness-work, — or work at all, for that matter, and 
as he sat wearily down to his homework tasks, we 
hated to have them turned into drudgery. So we said 
simply: 

" You ask your teacher if you may learn them as 
you please, if you will get them right." 

The next day the teacher, with much tact I think, 
announced to the class that those who got ninety 
per cent, in their spelling should be excused from 
handing in the written list. It was a small thing, 



166 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

but it was worth while. School work is made up of 
small things, all of which seem big to the children, 
especially when they are that bugbear of school 
days, home-work. 

" Natural Methods " became, after the " New De- 
parture " of Quincy, so many and so various, so 
original, so peculiar, so anything but the old way, 
that they came to mean a continual experimentation 
on the children. The remembrance of it all recalls 
the story of the nurse who scorned the thermometer 
for the baby's bath; she could " tell without." 
When asked how, she replied, " Why, mum, if the 
baby turns red it's too hot; if he turns blue it's too 
cold. It's the easiest way and it's sure! " 

By all that is sacred in childhood, let us leave the 
children as much freedom and originality in their 
mental development as we can, by any stretch of 
judgment, believe wise, even as, for their physical 
growth, we rejoice to see them run and jump and 
kick and sprawl to their heart's content and after 
their own heart's devices. We wouldn't interfere if 
they tried to coast up hill, or made their snow men 
standing on their heads. " Ah," we exclaim, " that 
will make them healthy and strong! " Do they not 
need a large amount of the same free activity in 
spirit, to gain a healthy strong soul? 



"natural method" 167 

"It might be desirable/' laments Mr. Hanford 
Henderson, "it would certainly be convenient, if 
we could present great slices of truth, like generous 
helps of layer-cake, to the minds of our children, 
and have them thoroughly assimilated by methods 
prescribed by ourselves in normal schools assembled. 
But however desirable and convenient, it is not 
possible. Yet we go on trying, yesterday, to-day, — 
I hope not forever." It is certainly wise to have 
the soul-feast always a bountiful one for children, 
provided we have enough self-control and faith not 
to be continually nagging their appetite. We 
should have viands — simple, dainty viands — suited to 
a child's palate. If we could but have faith in child- 
hood's appetite and impulses! Faith to believe that 
they indicate the true "Natural Methods"! Could 
we but recognise as God-given hints, childhood's 
longings and Teachings out after Life — full, abun- 
dant Life and Freedom! Our "adult egotism" 
prescribes all their mental activities. Every bit of 
the mental training of which our children are 
rightly capable — and more — we give into the charge 
of the school. And the school says to them, " You 
must do even as the others do; you must all do and 
be, alike." 

We ought steadily to resist the pedagogical theory 



168 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

that a step-by-step, logical-order track can be laid 
for children, and all children set running at the 
same pace upon it. No such theory would ever get 
birth from a Parent's experience. The result of 
this pedagogical belief is, that for the school half 
of a child's life, there get to be constructed ladders, 
upon which to climb to the heights of knowledge, 
the foot firm upon one rung before the next may 
be attempted; the child meanwhile is cheered up 
the ladders by innumerable sweet, discouraging lit- 
tle encouragements for the feeble; "little by little," 
" pas a pas" " slow and sure," and the like, most of 
which are epigrams far more true in the material 
world than in the world of spirit. Many a child can 
go fast and sure, leap by leap, over long stretches of 
the hard road of learning — if he be not hindered. 
I do not now believe there exists that close simi- 
larity between material and mental law in which I 
once had so much faith. Nature is far more liberal 
and indulgent in things spiritual than in things 
material. Matter is hard, inflexible, stubborn. 
Spirit is fluid, flexible, elusive. There is no 
Aladdin's lamp for us — not yet — in things material. 
Matter is relentless. But who has not felt at times, 
the almost magic thrill of a sudden inspiration or 
revealing, overleaping at one bound, scores of the 



"natural method" 169 

logician's ladder-rungs? Wings may sprout at any 
unexpected moment and bear an intense soul to 
heights where no man knows enough to fix a ladder- 
top. "Watch. Trust a little to Nature. The 
choicest spirits will ignore your ladders, and bridges, 
and £ower-strewn paths, to the goal you have 
selected. They have their own individual flights to 
take; let them take them. Do not too much be- 
lieve that the adult mind has a right to demand 
from the child, conformity to its wisdom and its 
methods. The "Natural Method" in most things 
is the growing to a thing, not the being taught it. 
One wonders if Mr. Alexis Frye should not be 
given the first prize for a "Natural Method" of 
doing things. We shall always recall with delight 
his bold, magnificent way of introducing our ideals 
and ways into the Cuban schools. He seems never 
to have even thought of establishing an American 
normal school in Cuba and sending down a batch of 
pedagogues and professors to equip the teachers 
with Herbartian or other psychology, and big- 
worded wisdom of the order described in our In- 
troduction. To have done that would, indeed, have 
been an orderly, regulation way. But behold now 
how much more "natural" was his method. He 
simply brought a thousand or more of the Cuban 



170 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

teachers up here so that, to use President Eliot's 
words, they might " see how our people live; see our 
manners and customs when we are at work and when 
we are at ease. ... To see what has come of the 
steady, slow development of civil, political, social, 
and industrial liberty through eight generations of 
men on this rude shore and this barren soil." Then 
he took them home again and dispersed them all 
over the Island. And did he not accomplish more 
thereby, than would have been accomplished by 
ordinary methods in ten years? 

Even by the best of methods nobody can be taught 
faster than he can learn. "The speed of the 
horseman must be limited by the power of the 
horse," which is John Milton's conclusion of the 
matter. 

It comes to me ever more and more strongly, 
every way of looking at it, that our part in educa- 
tion is not primarily, the getting up of school- 
curricula and schemes of education, but hum- 
ble cooperation with what the child may reveal 
as Nature's method, — which is surely Evolu- 
tion. We have all come, in this generation, to 
believe in evolution for the world universal. But 
evolution for the whole is compassed only by a 
separate little scheme of evolution for each individ- 



"natural method" 171 

ualised atom or part. Thus the progress of the 
Human Race must come by evolving the true nature 
of each individual child; — which brings us to the 
province of Education. 

It may be claimed that School-Curricula are in- 
tended to be made in harmony with the laws of 
this very evolution. But continuous contact with 
the daily free activities of childhood, which are, 
indeed, but the actual processes of evolution, must 
have a tendency to arouse in every thoughtful 
parent's mind, doubts as to whether worthy schemes 
of education can be mapped out for any child or set 
of children, for weeks and months and years in 
advance. It would be unpardonably weak of us not 
to have always within our own view, the great fields 
of knowledge into which we hope our children will 
enter; but we shall surely fail if we try too much to 
dictate the order of their entering. That is 
Nature's share in the scheme; it is she who gives 
them their make-up, their temperament, and the 
trend of their longings. Our part is to watch; to 
stand by and, from day to day, shift the point of 
contact to fit the individual and momentary need. 
When an onrush of class heat and fervour is 
generated, and is bearing a class toward high ideals, 
would you, in your " adult egotism/' switch them off 



172 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

to a siding, merely to keep them on the " grade " 
track? Or if it be the ardour of an individual child, 
must it, forsooth, be ignored, that the child may- 
fit in with the other forty-nine? Nay, let us have 
more faith. 

Let us trust the individual genius of each nation; 
of each particular school-class even; but most 
especially and most sacredly, let us reverence the 
individuality of each child. Scientific produce- 
raisers and stock-raisers understand this principle 
by instinct: they cultivate each plant, each animal 
by itself. Letting it take its own lead, they stand 
by to suppress, and so cultivate out, the undesirable 
characteristics, and to encourage by every means, 
the desired qualities. Let us be as scientific in 
Education. Let us allow Cuban and Filipino to 
evolve his own destiny, meanwhile helping him all 
in our power. Let us believe in the same law for 
any nation or individual weaker than ourselves, or 
behind us in the march of civilisation. Most 
especially, as before said, let us give the children the 
benefit of this law of evolution; — evolution assisted 
by civilisation, not coerced by it. 



ARITHMETIC 

" Multiplication is vexation, 
Division is as bad; 
The Rule of Three doth puzzle me 
And Fractions drive me mad." 

Akithmetic! Charm and delight of my school- 
days! Divine harmony of numbers and of quantity! 
Enchanted realm for those " horn to it "! Bottom- 
less pit for the school-child who discovers not its 
fascinations! A youngster good in Arithmetic may 
go through the public school head high. Skill in 
Arithmetic will cover a multitude of sins. But be 
he "stupid" in Arithmetic, other graces will not 
redeem him. He may be a natural artist, a genius 
in history, have a fine literary instinct, a strong 
lovable character; — but he can't keep up in Arith- 
metic! And Arithmetic is the grade-regulator! 

Yet ability in Arithmetic is not a fair test of a 
child's intelligence, intellectual capacity, scholar- 
ship, practicalness, or even mathematical talent; 
that is, Arithmetic as everywhere required and 
173 



174 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

taught in the schools. From the time when I first 
knew how to count, I have taught Arithmetic, — for 
money, for love of childhood, oftenest perhaps, for 
the very love which I bear for the study itself, and I 
have yet to meet the first normal child who did not 
seem to me to have natural ability in Arithmetic. 
So universal is the ability to comprehend it, indeed, 
that it seems almost a fair test of normality. Of 
course this ability, like ability in all other directions, 
varies widely in different children, but I am con- 
vinced that it is not lack of ability in pupils which 
" generates so much artificial stupidity " in that 
branch; neither is it lack of faithfulness on the part 
of teachers, who are mostly over-conscientious. 
The " stupidity " is in the everywhere accepted 
method of teaching it, and especially in the arrange- 
ment of school arithmetics. Arithmetics of to-day 
have, all of them, a most " Scientific Presentation of 
the Subject," but the arrangement is universally 
" scientific " with regard to the subject, and not in 
regard to the natural development of a child's ap- 
preciation of number. But more of that later. 

I was very small when the determination first 
took possession of me to make a " decent arith- 
metic " when I should be " big." I was but a dozen 
years or so of age when one of my teachers an- 



ARITHMETIC 175 

nounced to our class, that in a few years the schools 
would probably all be using my arithmetic! He 
made the announcement jocosely, but I did not 
smile. In my trusting child-heart I looked upon 
his prophecy as a sure one. For many years the 
ambition to make a " decent arithmetic " broke out 
occasionally in acute form. I wish I (or some one) 
had been given the grace and strength and* time to 
do it. The ambition died long ago. The cause of 
its death was manifold. 

1st. There were already so many arithmetics. 

2d. If I really did make a " decent " one it 
would be so radically, so revolutionarily different from 
other arithmetics that teachers would think — well, 
that the maker of it was crazy, perhaps. 

3d. That very likely I couldn't after all, do it 
as I had it in mind; to conceive a thing and to 
execute it are two very different things. 

4th. The fourth cause will appear in the follow- 
ing incident, although the incident occurred after 
the death of said ambition. 

The ambition which replaced that of making a 
" decent arithmetic " was an ambition to discover 
one. To that end, whenever I heard of the publica- 
tion of a new arithmetic, I hastened immediately to 
give it sympathetic attention and examination. 



176 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Both ambitions are dead now. I have arrived with 
many others at the mournful stage of regarding the 
arithmetic disease in the schools as an incurable 
one. However, the incident is fraught with fairly 
profitable food for reflection and I will give it. 

At one time two new arithmetics by rival firms 
were announced at the same time, each claiming to 
be arranged " scientifically/' on " natural methods " 
and incorporating the " newest and most up-to-date 
ideas." I dropped into the publishing house of one 
of the books and, asking to see their new arithmetic, 
seated myself to examine it, intending, if it seemed 
to warrant my doing so, to buy it for my collection. 
Then I went over to the clerk, with whom I held 
the wholly unpremeditated conversation which 
follows: 

I. " Is the book essentially different from all the 
other arithmetics? Enough different to warrant 
adding another to the list? " 

He. " We think it is a pretty good arithmetic." 

I. " Yes, but aren't such and such arithmetics 
good ones? — about as good as this?" 

He. " Those are excellent arithmetics " (cau- 
tiously). 

I. "But this one? Why did you make another? 
How is it different?" 



ARITHMETIC 177 

He. "Well, we thought we would like an arith- 
metic of our own." 

I. " I see; and So-and-So thought they would like 
one of their own, I suppose; have you seen theirs? " 

He. "I have seen it. It looks like a good one, 
too " (generously). 

I. "Isn't it almost exactly like this one? The 
advertisement sounds just like it. I'd like very 
much to see one; you haven't a copy, have you?" 

He. " We keep only our own publications." 

I (after a moment's hesitation with an air of 
good-comradeship). " You haven't a copy any- 
where about, have you? " (I knew they must have.) 
" It's a long way up there, and I do want to see one 
very much." 

He. " I think So-and-So may have one." 

He really got me one from So-and-So's desk, and 
I spent some little time examining it and in compar- 
ing them. I found them as I had expected, almost 
identical. Then I returned to the desk of the 
hospitable salesman and resumed our conversation. 
He was accustomed to meeting " All sorts and condi- 
tions of men" and he handled me with patience 
and even with courtesy. 

I. " Do you feel that you have come to the final 
thing in arithmetics? For instance, do you regard 



178 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

your arithmetics as up to your histories, and 
geographies, and books for teaching English and 
Science?" 

He. " Well, no, we don't. We are always on the 
look-out for a good thing in arithmetics." (Then he 
evidently thought it his turn to do the quizzing, and 
he asked smilingly, but probably with a good deal 
of inward irony), "Why don't you make an arith- 
metic yourself?" 

I. "I have often thought of it, and I'm not 
wholly convinced that I shall rest comfortably 
under the sod if I don't — unless some one else writes 
my arithmetic." 

He. " Would it be so very different? " 

I. "Very different." 

He. "In what respect?" 

I. " The other day we got a new sewing-machine 
at our house, and the old one was turned over to 
our little boy. We told him that, for him, it was 
almost as good as the new one. "Most as good!' 
he exclaimed, 'It's a good deal better! More 
machinery! ' And surely, beside the old one, the 
beautiful new machine did look ashamed of itself 
with its exceedingly simple arrangement for sewing. 
My arithmetic would be like that; in the presence 
of other arithmetics, it would hang its head with 



ARITHMETIC 179 

shame at the very nakedness of its simplicity." (He 
laughed politely and I continued) : " But supposing 
I, or any one else, should make an arithmetic which 
really was, on the face of it, far ahead of other 
arithmetics in fitness for the use of children, would 
it, on its merits alone, stand much of a chance for 
sale, do you think? " 

He (laughing). "No, perhaps not, on its merits 
alone." 

I. " Which arithmetic gets the sale, the "best one 
or the hest pushed one? " 

He. " We do have to do a good deal of pushing." 
I. "And if an absolutely perfect arithmetic 
should enter the lists, its perfection would not be a 
large element in contributing to its success." 
He. " I don't know that it would, really." 
This little incident gives a hint, perhaps, why 
nobody writes arithmetics for the children. Arith- 
metics are for publishing houses. Each one wants 
one of its own. And there's more money and less 
risk in an arithmetic of the "regular kind"; and 
the " regular kind " is complexly " scientific." For 
the present, in spite of prevailing theories to the 
contrary, the current of actual arithmetic-teaching 
is not set in the direction of simplicity. The old 
love prevails for words and rules, and forms and 



180 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

formulas, for superabundant explanations and ex- 
planations of explanations, and apparatus and ap- 
pliances, for teaching this simplest of simple sub- 
jects, — the only method scorned being the direct, 
each-in-his-own-way coming at the simple problems 
required in actual life, and for further mathematics. 
Eesult: a double or treble portion of time must be 
given to arithmetic during the whole eight or ten 
years of primary and grammar-school work, and 
must even then, have a " finishing off " course if ex- 
amination in it is required for college or technical 
school. And, after all that, how small the number 
in practical life who are " good at figures "\ There 
are a few, it is freely acknowledged, who like arith- 
metic in the schools, nevertheless, I do not believe 
it is overstating the truth to say that it is the most 
universally "hated," and shirked, and failed-in 
study in the schools to-day. 

Arithmetic should be one of the incidental things 
in the primary, and I am not sure but also in the 
grammar, grades, not the central one; one of the 
side-dishes at the feast, not the piece de resistance. 
A glance at the French course of instruction as 
given in President Eliot's "Educational Reform," 
makes it seem as if it were really so in France. By 
that schedule, during the primary and grammar- 



ARITHMETIC 181 

school age, the time devoted to arithmetic is about 
a third as much as we allot at that age. The time 
thus gained is given largely to the acquisition of 
foreign languages. How much more "natural"! 
and "scientific"! For these are the unreasoning, 
obedient years of parrot-like imitativeness and of 
memory. 

To roam about, even to riot, among numbers is a 
delight to children, and is, therefore, natural. It 
is not a delight and is, therefore, not natural to " do 
arithmetic" at so early an age as it is done, or 
attempted to be done, in the schools. Nor is it 
natural for young children to do arithmetic, or any- 
thing else, attended by so much difficult terminol- 
ogy. A little girl of my acquaintance used to talk 
about the toperator and denominator of fractions. 
On our quizzing her a little she said jauntily: " Oh, I 
say it that way always so's to remember which one's 
the top one." "I remember "divisor 5 all right," 
said a little chap, of long division, " because it's the 
divider, and besides, we use it so much, but I don't 
bother about the others." "But don't you use 
'quotient' just as much?" we asked. "Which 
one is that? the answer? Well, I call it the an- 
swer." 

Children like, and ought to have, small worcis 



182 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

with big ideas, not small ideas with big words. 
Which of ourselves likes a nut that's mostly shell? 

When all is said, arithmetic should not be taught 
overmuch. Like Science it should be . . . come 
upon, worked out in one's own way. And it is 
really so simple! Only common-sense applications 
of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division! 
Arithmetic should be, as it were, planted, tended 
somewhat, and be allowed to grow, according to the 
recipe of the "Natural Method" chapter, while we 
go about something else. Like other things that 
grow, if you think to make it grow unduly fast and 
keep pulling at it, you do but dwarf it. If a child 
of ten can easily divide 8,764 by 43, the size of his 
possibilities in long division will grow along with 
the size of the rest of him, and later on he will have 
no trouble in dividing 6,456,165,769,632 by 45,963 if 
occasion should ever be unkind enough to require it 
of him. Do you not suppose his mental power is to 
grow as fast as his bodily? Do not waste precious 
childhood and youth teaching or trying to teach, 
what belongs to a later age, and will almost surely 
grow, if we will but give it opportunity, from its 
own Nature-given impetus. We may indeed, trust 
a great deal to the growing quality of arithmetic. 
Judgment and experience come late, and skill in 



ARITHMETIC 183 

arithmetic requires judgment and experience. 
Whether any years, except those of some specialists, 
are suited to cumbersome arithmetic is a question, 
but we may be sure that these early years are not; 
these open-minded, romantic, receptive, impressible 
days are far too valuable for any other than things 
of beauty and joy and use. They should be given 
over to whatever develops character: high moral 
purpose and refinement. The heavy artillery of 
arithmetic is so soulless, so mechanical, as to be 
almost stultifying to the moral development of 
children who " hate " it. 

We had a child whose mind balked in arithmetic. 
We lost all patience — so much easier it is to preach 
than to practise in the matter of patience. Then 
common sense and consistency flashed the thought 
upon me: 

" This child is of at least ordinary intelligence; 
I am surely of e;r£ra-ordinary patience in educa- 
tional matters; we must, therefore, be attempting 
unnatural things." On the spot I said to the 
child: 

"There! Close your book. You need have no 
more to do with arithmetic for one year. We'll see 
if you won't grow to that! We'll try a rotation of 
crops" 



184 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

We were given grace (which I think was quite 
remarkable) to adhere to that decision, and when at 
the end of the year, the child went again about her 
arithmetic, we were delighted and inconsistently 
amazed to observe the naturalness and ease with 
which she skipped along, making not the slightest 
difficulty over the particular subject on which she 
had stumbled so vexatiously. And that child, at a 
later date, performed some quite unusual feats in 
mathematics, which I cannot help fancying she 
would never have done, if she had continued to be 
nagged instead of being set free. 

Under the inspiration of our success in this ex- 
periment, on several occasions we repeated the ex- 
perience on a smaller scale, and every time to our 
satisfaction. Plant, then, in Arithmetic; plant 
assiduously, and carefully cherish and tend your 
plantings, and trust Time to bring the increase. 
For, as I have before observed, I cannot help look- 
ing upon Arithmetic as the very chief of the " or- 
ganic " or "growing" studies. Teach the curious 
inquisitive youngsters to count — by the dozens, by 
the scores, by the gross; to measure and to reckon 
money. They love to measure by the ounce and 
pound; by the foot and yard and rod and mile; to 
solve easy and useful and practical problems in 



ARITHMETIC 185 

measurements. But by the sacredness of the laws 
of childhood, trust Nature with her laws of growth 
to do as she pleases about developing them, later 
on, to such a point that they will care to, or be able 
to, do such things as " Ascertain what part of a mile 
is 7 furlongs, 37 rods, 3 yds., 2 ft. and 5 inches, 
decimally and fractionally, and prove that the 
answers are identical." 

Children will take great pleasure in halving and 
quartering things and, indeed, in learning all about 
fractions which one needs to know, provided they 
are allowed to come at it interestingly, but again 
trust Nature (if she thinks necessary) to get them 
on to such fractions as: 



64 18 t 
85 + 19 1tt 



Aye, trust Nature. All the same I believe she 
will lead them on, not to those particular attain- 
ments, but to far higher and more uplifting ones of 
her own choosing. All this in the face of the fact 
that there are always a few arithmetical acrobats in 
every class to whom such gymnastics are a delight 
and who should be encouraged to indulge in them. 
It would, indeed, be cruel to force all children to 



186 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

walk the tight-rope because there is now and then 
one who must do it by the very nature of him. It 
would take high courage, which we do not yet 
possess, to require our children to learn the simple 
essentials of arithmetic, and leave them free to 
follow their own leading as to whether they shall 
do the " extras." Yet this is what we should do, 
more or less. If we were to do that in all the studies, 
I believe we should get ourselves marvellously 
astonished and delighted, by discovering that nearly 
every pupil would forge ahead in some direction, 
thus revealing his own peculiar bent and individual- 
ity. And most would go far on in the majority of 
things. 

No other study lends itself more readily to the 
purposes of the " Natural Method " inventors than 
Arithmetic; and no subject is so busily furnished 
forth with devices and apparatus and paraphernalia 
for its teaching, than this simplest of subjects, 
number. To approach it comfortably, and with 
childlike directness and simplicity of vision, is the 
one method not permitted. Consequently, on all 
sides is heard the wail that children " get on all right 
except in arithmetic." Over and over again and 
everywhere we hear it. 

One of our neighbour's children " had trouble " 



ARITHMETIC 187 

in this way with her arithmetic. She was doing 
division of fractions. I supposed I had set her free 
from all elaborations when I told her not to bother, 
but to turn her divisor upside down and go ahead 
exactly as though it were multiplication, which she 
said was "lovely because it was just cancellation." 
So I asked, "Why, what's the trouble?" "Oh, I 
can't do them," she moaned. " They won't let us do 
'em your way. First you have to divide or multiply, 
I always forget which, by the top, then do the other 
thing by the bottom, and it always comes out wrong, 
for I just try it by that easy way of yours, on the sly, 
to see." 

I took the resolve of visiting the school, with 
the ulterior purpose, of course, of interceding in my 
little friend's behalf. The teacher I knew well 
for a genuine, sturdy, reasonable woman, enthusias- 
tic in her work. I gradually got the conversation 
led up to this " new way " of teaching division of 
fractions, smilingly referring to the good old rule of 
our day, "Invert the divisor and proceed as in 
multiplication," meaning to show her that, after all, 
it isn't quite always necessary to understand such 
rules. I felt quite triumphant in the success which 
I was about to achieve. Alas! When I referred to 
her " new way " her face lighted immediately: 



188 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

" Isn't it fine ? " she exclaimed. " Just think of 
that dull, uncomprehending way we used to learn 
it! And this way is so simple! " 

Her good-comradeship was too much for me. 
How could I be expected to descend from that 
pedestal whereon stood the intelligent and modern, 
and confess myself one of the stupid old fogies? I 
made up my mind to desert little Mary! Ashamed 
of it? Of course! But I soothed myself all the way 
home: " Anyway, the case was hopeless. It would 
have been useless. Perhaps I could help Mary to 
the new way, even if it was bothersome! " etc., etc. 
But once at home again I put her on her own 
defence. 

" You tell the teacher," I said, " that you love 
our way and that you and I always do it that way, 
and I guess she'll let you." 

A day or two afterwards I met her and I asked: 

" Well, how goes the arithmetic ? " 

" Oh," she replied happily, " the teacher laughed 
when I told her, and said ' All right.' " 

I'm sure that teacher scented cowardice; but to 
this day Mary and I do it " the good old way " with- 
out stopping to pay toll to reason, and I have my 
suspicion that the teacher does the same when she 
isn't setting an example for her class. 



ARITHMETIC 189 

There are indeed, some Gordian knots which 
should be cut, not untied. The application of 
principles should, of course, be always absolutely 
and clearly understood. But long division, square 
root, and the like are best learned without bothering 
in childhood about the reason for them. As soon 
as we get a good grip on the formula, we give 
the reason the go-by, anyway. Moreover, these 
reasons are too abstruse for childhood. Children 
do not really get the reasons when we think they are 
getting them. All the " Natural Methods " in the 
world won't make children truly comprehend mathe- 
matical reasoning till they are up to it, how- 
ever glibly they repeat the words of your explana- 
tions. 

And even things which must be understood 
should not have too many and too wordy explana- 
tions put upon them. Explanations are often but 
a painful rat-tat-tat on the tympanum of the ear. 
Clear away the mists you must, surely, for those 
who are misty-minded in arithmetic; gently, sug- 
gestively, never wordily, lead them to work their 
own way, you beside them to open up vistas ahead 
when courage or ability fails. When you blaze 
your own way through a wilderness you are for- 
ever after able to follow the trail. And the sense 



190 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

of accomplishment gives such an inspiring sensation 
of self-respect and triumph! 

A little friend of mine was once working away 
trying to learn her addition tables " skipping 
'round." She got the right result every time, but 
was slow about it. I called her to me. 

"Tell me how you get them/' I said, "get me 
seven and nine/' and after a moment she gave me 
the correct answer. " You don't count it, do you? " 
I asked. 

" Oh, my! no," she exclaimed. " Of course that's 
quicker, but we aren't allowed to count." Then, 
making elaborate preparations as though the per- 
formance were to be a formidable one, she delivered 
herself with great precision and system: "First I 
say two eights are sixteen, then seven is one less 
than eight; that makes it down to fifteen, then nine 
is one more than eight; that makes it up again to 
sixteen. See? " 

" And do you do them all that way? " 

"Yes, 'cause I know all the twos, two eightses 
and two sevenses and all of 'em." 

I praised her way of course, then asked her if she 
would like to know my way. She was doubtful; it 
was all so laborious! but she consented, and it was 
my turn for elaborate preparation! I meant to ex- 



ARITHMETIC 191 

plain that thing so simply that the child should never 
again have anything but pleasure in it! Adult 
egotism once more! I began cautiously: 

"Let's see. It's seven and nine. You know 
seven and ten are " 

" Goodness gracious! " interrupted the child with 
a wild jump, " what a goose I am! why didn't I ever 
think of getting 'em from the tens? It just goes 
down one! Give me all the nines there are! quick! " 

She answered them all promptly and with the 
greatest glee, for she was a child slow in number 
and taking it rather hard, and here were " a whole 
lot of 'em all off " at one fell swoop. She did the 
eights in the same way " going down two." 

Do you take it that I taught her my way? Not 
a bit; it was her own struggles, her familiarity with 
the field, that made her catch so quickly at the 
vision of things through that wee little opened vista. 

In my childhood the one great " Natural Method," 
the open sesame in arithmetic, was Analysis. " Re- 
turn always to unity" was dinned into our ears 
ad nauseam, till Colburn's Mental Arithmetic, which 
should have been the delight of my Arithmetic- 
adoring mind, became a vexation and a scourge. 

Superintendent Martin speaks with great admira- 
tion of that Colburn's Arithmetic of our old school 



192 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

days, as an " efficient force in raising the standard 
of instruction/' " This book came into the 
schools/' he says, "as refreshing as a northwest 
wind, and as stimulating. . . . Embodying the prin- 
ciples of the New Education, it wrought a revolu- 
tion in the teaching of arithmetic, and it determined 
the character of all subsequent arithmetics." 

Colburn's Arithmetic was meant to be, and ought 
to have been, " A refreshing breeze " in the arithme- 
tic class, but it did not take the conventional teacher 
of that day long to get it thoroughly hated. 

"If 7 oranges cost 21 cents, how much will 17 
oranges cost?" And the answer was ready the 
moment the teacher arrived at the interrogation 
point. Easy enough! Two 21's for 14 oranges, 
and 9 cts. for the other three, — 51 cents. And 
now the " fun " was over! Instead of being led on 
to another and another and still another of these 
delightful mental gymnastics, we must stop and 
tumble and stumble over this thing, first of course 
repeating the question: 

" If 7 oranges cost 21 cents, one orange will cost 
as much as seven cents will go into 21 cents, which 
is three cents; if one orange costs three cents, 17 
oranges will cost 17 times 3 cents, which is — (long 
pause) — 51 cents. Therefore, if 15 oranges " etc., 



ARITHMETIC 193 

etc. The memory of all that makes me angry when 
I think of it, even at the present day. 

Possibly you think such nonsense is done away 
with, and it is, in most places, in quite such verbose 
formality, but one is astonished, even now, in visit- 
ing schools, to see a vast amount of this sort of 
nagging of the children. What if the child does 
get the right answer? The conscientious teacher's 
soul is not satisfied till she is sure that he has done 
it in her way, which is, of course, the natural and 
best way. I believe such bothering is an even bigger 
drawback to children's morals than it is to their 
arithmetic. How much of all that committed-to- 
memory explanation was arithmetic ? The question 
and the flashed answer; the rest was perhaps " lan- 
guage," perhaps persiflage. By all means teach a 
child to express himself, but don't in the name of 
honesty, call it " arithmetic " when you force a child 
to rattle off someone else's ideas in that fashion; nor 
do it when the child's mind should be allowed to play 
freely about his arithmetic. Let him have a chance 
to acquire concentration of thought, lack of which 
is the bane of — everything. I used to get through 
that formula painstakingly and with credit, solely 
for the mark, for I was ambitious, but I did it with 
contempt under my jacket, saying to myself: 



194 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

" Fifty-one's right; it's none of your business how 
I got it; your way's horrid! " And my impertinence 
of spirit was in no manner subdued when, on giving 
vent to my resentment at home, my father laughed 
at me proudly and told me I was right. 

A young woman who had just entered college was 
much impressed by the way in which the students 
were held responsible for results only, being left to 
get at them in their own way. 

"Don't you think," she was asked, "that the 
college method could be begun earlier? " 

" It ought to be begun at birth! " she exclaimed, 
with a little blaze in her eyes that opened up 
a whole revelation of past school befuddlements 
over which her mind was evidently travelling 
back. 

This girl had never had the "regular training" 
in arithmetic, and she had all sorts of individual 
ways and short cuts 'cross lots, of getting at things. 
One day in helping out a young fellow of about 
seventeen, I said: 

" Oh, come, you are altogether too old to go 
around Robin Hood's barn like that. So-and-so 
[referring to this young woman] would do that like 
this " 

" She! " he interrupted, with a good deal of heat, 



ARITHMETIC 195 

"well, she never studied arithmetic like the rest of 
us, and, of course, she does things the easiest way. 
But I tell you when a fellow gets put through the 
paces for years, he just can't do things those easy 
ways; he's just got to take it regular! " 

What a comment! Couldn't do arithmetic the 
easy ways because he had studied it so long! 

This young woman told us of an amusing incident 
which occurred in the chemical laboratory at 
college. They had come to a place where they were 
pausing to make calculations; she made hers and 
stepped sociably over to her neighbour to compare 
results. The neighbour glanced at the figures and 
asked, "Why, how did you do it so easily?" She 
was shown, and expressed admiration and apparent 
satisfaction, but a little later my friend noticed that 
she had not gone on with her experiment, but was 
still going through her calculations with worried 
brow. She asked, " Didn't you quite understand 
it?" 

" Oh, yes, indeed," was the answer, " and it was 
fine, but I thought I had better do it the regular 
way and be sure." 

Now, I ask you, shouldn't the shortest and easiest 
way in arithmetic be the "regular" way? And 
hadn't that young woman surely been a victim of 



196 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

the " Generation of Artificial Stupidity in Arithme- 
tic " ? This generation of stupidity is begun in the 
schools as soon as written work begins, and there 
are too many arithmetic victims all about us. Does 
not our lad's home-work savour somewhat of it this 
week? 

" What is the ratio of 5 yds. 4 ft. 14 in. to 3 yds. 
5ft.? 

" John has 4 gals. 5 qts. 2 pts. of molasses in his 
jug and Jane has 7 gals. 6 qts. 5 pts. in hers. What 
is the ratio of John's molasses to Jane's ? " 

Notice the refinement of nagging, " 5 qts. and 2 
pts "; " 3 yds. and 5 ft." Ratio is the « Natural 
Method " over there just now. They are ratio-mad. 
One wonders what is the ratio of the sense to the 
nonsense in it all. 

Dropping in at a friend's house the other evening, 
we found their little girl working away at her 
omnipresent arithmetic. She was "doing well at 
school in all but arithmetic." She is a bright girl 
and there is no excuse whatever for her not " doing 
well " in that as in her other lessons; yet there is 
danger of her being kept back for an entire year in 
all her other lessons on account of arithmetic. This 
particular evening "a great long example" was 
bothering her. 



ARITHMETIC 197 

"It's easy enough," she exclaimed, "but it's so 
horrid long." I looked over her shoulder. 

"What is 250 of 1250, of 750, of 500, of 384 
inches ? " 

She had worked it out thus, only she had made a 
mistake somewhere: 

1.25 
.25 
625 
250 



.3125 
.75 

15625 
21875 
.234375 

.50 

.11718750 
384 
46875000 
93750000 
35156250 



45.00000000 inches 



I should not give this incident, nor take so much 
pains to give the entire work, were it not so good an 
illustration, so fair a type, of what is going on in 
the schools. This child is a pupil in one of the 
best schools of Boston. I easily led her to see this, 
short method: 



4 of 4 of l of -i of:!§! " =45 - 



198 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

But she showed little interest. 

" Of course it's nice," she said nervously, " but 
she'll call it wrong, I know she will." Her one 
thought, repeated again and again, was to get at 
whatever the teacher would " call right." Finally 
we induced her to pass it in the "regular way," 
since she felt that her perfect mark was more 
assured by that method, but to ask the teacher 
about the short way, too. Next day she told me 
that the teacher had "just said, Oh, of course you 
could do it fractionally, but the decimal way is 
better." 

Ask any business accountant if the shortest way 
is not the best way. We parents are asleep. We 
should insist upon a different state of things in 
arithmetic. 

In his paper on "Can School Programmes be 
Shortened and Enriched?" President Eliot writes 
with some heat: 

"Is it not an abominable waste of the time and 
strength of children to put them to doing in a 
difficult way, never used in real life, something they 
will be able to do in an easy way a year or two later? 
To introduce any artificial hardness into the course 
of training that any human being has to follow, is 
an unpardonable educational sin. There is hard- 



ARITHMETIC 199 

ness enough in this world without manufacturing 
any, particularly for children." 

That is a word needed on arithmetic almost every- 
where. Think of the pages of figures, maddening 
in the almost utter impossibility of getting them 
correct, for which boys and girls sacrifice hours of 
precious freedom in doing examples in compound 
interest! They should be taught to do them from 
the computed tables, as business men do them! 
But it is the same in all parts of the arithmetic! 

I have a friend who had a boy in the Public 
School of a large city. That the boy is dull in 
arithmetic is without doubt, but the father is a 
natural arithmetician, and could have assisted the 
boy and kept him up with his class, but he could 
not get into touch with the exact school forms into 
which the work was required to be put at the school, 
and as no other would be accepted, he was helpless. 
At length the boy was forbidden to have any help 
at home. He was at last forced to leave school and 
has gone to work, — and is giving good satisfaction. 
I remonstrated with the father quite hotly on the 
matter of his yielding so tamely, and he asked me 
what I supposed one man could do against a great 
institution like the Public School System of a big 
city! Is not the whole incident a fine illustration 



200 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

of the need there is that Parents should be hand 
in hand with Pedagogues in the matter of Educa- 
tion? But such illustrations can be furnished with- 
out end. 

Children should have an arithmetic simple 
enough to be put into their hands as soon as they 
have arrived at a point where it is wise for them to 
do "written arithmetic/' It should be so attract- 
ive and, if possible, should be so well besprinkled 
with illustrations and all sorts of knacky little 
things to entice them, that we might feel ourselves 
justified in saying to them, "Master this book 
completely, every bit of it." There should be not 
one single thing in it which every child could not 
understand, and absolutely no wordy, " scientific " 
rules and explanations. The class should then be 
required to go right through it from beginning to 
end, each pupil doing it his own way and talcing his 
own pace. Of course I know that is heresy, but 
heresy has, in all history, usually been able in the 
end, to hold up its head. If it is done rightly and 
sympathetically, this thing can be done; and it 
ought to be done — in this manner or in some other. 
By some method the arithmetic disease should be 
cured, for even with all the time and all the nerve- 
energy of the children which is at present allotted 



ARITHMETIC 201 

to it, very few people out in the practical world, 
handle their few little problems with naturalness 
and ease. 

Teachers are vaguely or clearly conscious of this 
need of a simple, lovable arithmetic, as is seen by 
the fact that in many schools, the children's lessons 
are given out from the blackboard. The teacher 
hunts down the examples in various arithmetics, 
writes them on the board, often hurriedly during 
recess or after school, too frequently in small pale 
handwriting, in high lights or low lights or no 
lights, to be copied off by the pupil; he does it 
accurately, perhaps, but " any old how," " just so I 
can read it myself," at the close of the five-hour 
confinement when accuracy is even less natural to 
him than usual. In the evening the smudgy copy 
is pulled forth from the miscellaneous child-pocket 
contents, and read by whatever light good or ill 
fortune happens to supply him. And now, in nine 
cases out of ten, tired enough to go to bed, the little 
student is obliged to muster up enough brain, not 
only to work out the examples, but to get them into 
exactly the form which the brainy teacher has 
evolved as the " Natural " one. And nothing must 
be forgotten. Said our little chap the other day on 
returning from school: 



202 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

"I can never remember to put the period after 
Ans and so half the time I lose my 100$. But/' 
angrily, " I don't see that it is wrong." 

" No, it isn't/' we agreed. " How many legs has 
a horse if you count the tail as a leg? " 

That question is our stock consolation in such 
cases and he answered gaily as he ran off to play: 

" Four just the same; calling it a leg doesn't make 
it a leg." 

We never intend to discredit the teacher, but we 
shall always see to it that every child who has to do 
with us, learns to distinguish the real thing from 
the red tape it gets wrapped up in. 

It would be easy to write an entire book on the 
subject of " Sense and Nonsense in Arithmetic." 
But in this book, the simple, beautiful, ill-handled 
subject of Arithmetic, no matter how much atten- 
tion it needs and deserves, can have but its one 
chapter. We regretfully omit the other two hun- 
dred pages we should like to write upon it! 

In closing I will only entreat Parents to beware 
of hard, forehead-wrinkling Arithmetic for their 
children. In childhood the mathematical faculty 
seems the one least rampant. Let required judg- 
ment and reasoning in children be small, but let 
them acquire fluency and accuracy in simple practi- 



ARITHMETIC 203 

cal problems as fast as they can do it normally. If, 
at eighteen or so, when the reasoning age has 
arrived, we have the wisdom to do as the French do, 
and allow a short fmishing-off course in Arithmetic, 
we shall find that the harvest will he plenteous even 
though the labour upon it has not been excessive — 
provided that it has been intelligent labour. Time, 
the great co-worker, gives rich increase on fertile 
soil. 



XI 

CHILD MORALITY 

" His best companions, Innocence and Health, 
And his best riches, Ignorance of Wealth." 

—Goldsmith. 

Would that I could approach the subject of the 
Moral Education of children filled with something 
of the confidence which was mine when I penned the 
chapter on ilrithmetic! Such a subject is not mine 
to write upon, and were it, I should want a book, 
not a chapter, to write it in. Too many wise and 
helpful things have been said and written upon the 
moral and spiritual training of the young, for me to 
have the presumption to do more than present a few 
fragmentary thoughts on the subject. It is with 
faltering steps that I do even that, so far does the 
right foundation of character transcend in impor- 
tance all other considerations in education, being, 
indeed, the sole end for which education exists. 
" Unless your cask be perfectly clean whatever you 
put into it will sour." Obscured morality, founda- 
tionless character, is least evil with least of technical 
204 



CHILD MORALITY 205 

education; even as unskilled rascality is less powerful 
for harm than skilled rascality. "The most 
atrocious miscreant of our time, if not of all time/' 
writes Compayre, "was a man who contrived a 
machine to sink ships in mid-ocean, his only object 
being to gain a sum of money on a false insurance." 
How helpless would have been the evil desire with- 
out the skill behind it! 

It goes without saying that if we ought to train 
the body to its highest usefulness as a worthy in- 
strument of the soul, we ought to train that soul to 
its maximum of righteousness. From the begin- 
ning to the end of education, from birth to death, 
the one paramount aim should be to develop charac- 
ter. How then, shall we define ideal character? 
Is ideal character more than this: highly developed 
power controlled by noble aims? 

Can we teach morals? Can we teach those things 
which make for this high ideal? Children are sus- 
ceptible, confiding creatures; they can be taught 
almost anything, and really can be influenced— for 
a time— by precept unrelated to example. But 
teaching will seldom long prevail without an ac- 
companying true life behind it; in the end it is real 
things which influence. It will ever be personality 
which will dominate,— the character behind the 



206 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

words. Was it not President Garfield who de- 
fined a university as a log with Mark Hopkins sit- 
ting on one end of it and a young man on the 
other? Not, mind you, any professor, but a Mark 
Hopkins! 

A young friend of mine, having selected one of 
her courses in college, attended one recitation, then 
gave it up for another, giving as her reason: "I 
couldn't meet that fossil twice a week for a whole 
year; I'd rather take any tiling with a whole man at 
the wheel." There should be no fossils among 
college professors; very likely this one was not; 
youth is often hypercritical and notional. All the 
same, struck by this student's attitude, I have many 
times since, advised students to select their college 
courses with the idea well in view, of coming in con- 
tact with the highest type of personality and charac- 
ter, even at some little sacrifice in the choice of 
studies; and I would advise parents, so far as is 
possible, to bear this thing in mind in placing their 
children at school. This idea was well understood 
ages ago by the wise. Plutarch writes: 

"When a child has arrived at such an age as to 
be put under the care of pedagogues, great care is to 
be used . . . for it is a true proverb that, if you 
live with a lame man you will halt." 



CHILD MORALITY 207 

I forget who it is who has forcibly put the idea in 
this form: 

" The foal of the racer neither finds out his speed 
nor calls out his powers, if pastured out with the 
common herd, that are destined for 'the collar and 
the yoke/' 

This thought is a most common one in the works 
of educators, — the infinite need of life behind pre- 
cept. That fable is a striking one of the young 
crab which, in reply to his mother's directions for 
walking, asked, " But, mother, why don't you walk 
straight ? " and then forever afterwards walked 
after the manner of her example and not of her 
precept. It was the life behind the teachings 
which, two thousand years ago, gave Christianity an 
impetus, the force of which is still as strong as at 
the start. 

Sorrowfully we know it, we are not ideal enough, 
neither Parents nor Pedagogues, to do our whole duty 
in the character-forming of our children, solely from 
the influence emanating from our personality. We 
do have to have ways of regulating things with 
them. Free from evil we receive them into the 
world; shortly, too shortly, they begin to lose their 
purity. We cannot now, as of old, believe that it is 
on account of inherent total depravity. Rather do 



208 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

we not wonder if it be not, in good part, because of 
the unwisdom of us who have long been here, and 
are — "sophisticated/' perhaps that word will ex- 
press it. Childhood, in the very inexperience of it, 
is uncaretaking and irresponsible, yields to present 
impulse. Let us not fear too much; not too much 
nag children, because of their frailties, — we will 
not call them faults. One wonders often if children 
really have " faults "; if they are either " good " or 
"bad," being in great measure little automatons, 
for whose performances we should hold environ- 
ment and companionship responsible! At times, 
and I am not sure but at all times, it seems so. 
This is not of course, an idea the least bit original; 
it is a fairly well supported one. If it be a true one, 
it will justify us in imitating somewhat the wisdom 
of the Old Testament Jehovah, who is recorded as 
having "winked at the iniquities of Israel." The 
course for us to pursue is not too much to punish and 
correct faults, but to ignore these and induce vir- 
tues. It is, indeed, one of the highest functions of 
both Pedagogues and Parents to sweep children into 
currents of the true and beautiful, that imperfections 
shall find no place and shall disappear. 

Only of inherent cruelty and cunning would we 
make exception. These two vices should be re- 



CHILD MORALITY 209 

garded as diseases, and should have active warfare 
waged against them; even then it is doubtful 
if they ever get wholly eradicated. Many a child 
tells " fibs "; many a one is often thoughtlessly cruel; 
but if you know of a boy or girl who sneaks through 
the world by "ways that are dark and tricks that 
are vain/' spare no pains to keep your child out of 
his company; you don't want him on the other end 
of the log in your child's university. No more do 
you want the boy who can deliberately pull the hind 
legs off a live frog because he has heard that they 
are good to eat. We may, however, thank Nature, 
who has an especial kindness for children, that she 
almost universally gives them so good a start that 
they may go through their earliest years head and 
heart high. And so it should be! Who would have 
it otherwise? Is not a happy-hearted child, care- 
free, because conscience-free, the freshest, breeziest, 
most inspiring thing you ever encounter? Would 
that we might ourselves become as little children 
and be fit companions for them. Jesus of Nazareth 
meant more than we realise when he said " Except 
ye become as little children." 

"The thoughts of youth are long, long 
thoughts; " let us as far as we can, accord a long, 
long childhood for the maturing of them. We are 



210 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

often told that the higher the species, the longer 
is its childhood. Are there not some intimations 
that this may also be trne of the individual? The 
rushed-throngh Yankee may win our admiration for 
his smartness, but he certainly is not so fine a 
specimen of a man as is he who has reflection and 
gentleness cultivated along with power. Indeed, 
reflection and gentleness are sources of the highest 
sort of power. But by the very nature of reflection 
and gentleness, they require a more leisurely de- 
velopment. Moreover, any virtue which is grown 
into is almost sure to have a finer fragrance than 
one that is " taught." 

As for virtue, which is but a right condition of 
the mind and heart, I wonder if it is not a bit of 
that same "adult egotism" that makes us fancy 
that we can to any great extent teach it to children, 
even if we may to adults. Children are far more 
uncompromising and direct in their conceptions of 
right than we sophisticated, calculating grown-ups 
are. Theodore Parker said of some one that he did 
not know that a straight line is the shortest distance 
between two points in morals as well as in geometry. 
That is true of too many of us, but children, unless 
they have been corrupted by adult sophistry, know it 
instinctively; they take it for granted. You will 



CHILD MORALITY 211 

recall the newspaper story of the two little girls 
hurrying along to school lest they should be late. 
" Let's kneel right down here and pray that we shall 
not be late/' proposed one of them; a good illustra- 
tion of one who had been corrupted by adult 
sophistry. "No" responded the other who was 
Nature's own, "we'll skin right along and pray as 
we go." 

A whole book might be written upon the subject 
of our sinfulness in corrupting the moral and 
religious sentiments of children. Our little girl 
and a "chum" were once studying their Sunday 
School lesson. It was of the Pharisee and the 
Publican. 

" Did you ever have a playmate who felt herself 
a little better than the others ? " was a question read 
out. The younger child looked wondering and 
thoughtful. 

"Why, no/' she replied, "I don't think I ever 
did." And she had been playing all summer with 
just that sort of a companion! 

"I have," exclaimed the older girl, scorning the 
simplicity of the younger. " Lots of girls are stuck 
up!" 

I hastened over and sent the children off to play. 
It was unbearable to witness the process of teaching 



212 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

a child to look for evil in her companions when her 
sweet soul was tuned only to the good in them! 
One of the divinest of our tasks with children is 
to protect the growth of their natural, uncompro- 
mising virtue. We may do it with some degree of 
success while they are in the nursery. It is our re- 
proach that not until they get out into the world, 
and bring the search-light of their keen young 
intellects to bear upon our actual doings, do their 
moral muddlings begin. " Children stand out in 
contrast to adults by reason of their uncorrupted 
nature; they are more upright and honest, and it is 
contact with the stupidity of adults that spoils 
children and breeds criminals." There is a pretty 
story of Gorgo, the little Greek maiden, who after- 
wards became the wife of Leonidas, the hero of 
Thermopylae. When a child of eight years she 
happened to be in the room one day while a mes- 
senger was trying to bribe her father to aid the 
Persians. He offered ten talents at first, and 
gradually raised the sum until the child, suspecting 
danger, said: " Go away, father, this stranger will 
corrupt you." The discussions of the youngsters 
during the present world disturbances, have been of 
great interest to me. They shoot like an arrow 
straight at the mark. 



CHILD MORALITY 213 

"The Philippines aren't ours; we've no right to 
take 'em. Suppose some one should try to take us? " 
"The English are mean to fight the Boers," ex- 
claimed our lad hotly; " it's none of their business 
what the Boers do; if they don't like it, let 'em go 
home! " Simple solutions for everything! On the 
opposing side they are just as direct. "Well, we 
can get money out of 'em and we want 'em! " 

" The secret of preserving the good, the true 
office of Education, lies not in sermons, harangues, 
idle talk, but in pure air, healthy food, good cor- 
poreal and mental exercise, the never-failing pres- 
ence and example of moral customs and habits, — the 
harmony of healthy social life." But we are on 
the road to Utopia again! We must return; Utopia 
is not practical. But children are not, even in 
Utopia, unalloyed perfection and delight. Child- 
hood's sins are many everywhere. It is not in me, 
however, to take pleasure in discoursing upon them, 
even when I have time and space which now I surely 
have not. There is one of these sins, nevertheless, 
that I must have my little " say-so " upon, for it is the 
one of them all, upon which the judgment of the 
world has always seemed to me to be too harsh; it is 
the sin supposed to be childhood's own, the sin of ly- 
ing. "Children are natural liars," is a proverb among 



214 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

those who have no reverence for childhood or un- 
derstanding of it. Are children natural liars? 
Surely not, — unless they happen to discover the 
" fun " or usefulness of a lie. Then young children 
do often have to go through a stage of fibbing be- 
fore they can discover the glory which belongs to 
truth. They will go on, up to a certain time, with 
hair-splitting attention to truth and exactness; — 
be it understood of course that I am speaking only of 
children whose environment is one of truth and sin- 
cerity. Sooner or later they are certain to meet with 
some playmate who has a wonderful facility for draw- 
ing himself out of predicaments by that " abom- 
ination unto the Lord," but " very present help 
in time of trouble," a lie. At first they wonder; 
then with a who-can't-do-that air, they try it them- 
selves, as they do most new things that they hear of 
or see. It must be a marvellous fascination when 
they first realise the ease and comfort which a lie 
will often bring! One of our children went through 
this experience. She had gone nearly up to the 
age of five with a devotion to* truthfulness and ac- 
curacy which nothing ever seemed to tempt. Child- 
hood seemed in her the very incarnation of truth! 
But alas! a family of three young children loomed 
suddenly upon our horizon. The oldest was not 



CHILD MORALITY 215 

ten. They were a riotous, dainty, fascinating, 
and lovable little group, but not one of them seemed 
to have the faculty of distinguishing between 
a lie and the truth. If it had not been for 
little gasps of horror which would creep over you, 
it would have been a delightful pastime to have 
watched those graceful little imps, trying to keep 
themselves in smooth waters Tby reeling off anything 
that happened to come into their curly heads in 
defence of themselves, or in explanation of their 
mischief. We wondered what the effect would 
be on our little precisionist. We were soon to 
know. 

"Did you do so-and-so?" I asked at dinner one 
day concerning something we had forbidden her and 
the others to do. 

" No, I didn't," she replied cheerfully. 

« But you did!" 

Down went her knife and fork in astonishment; 
with a gasp, not of shame but of sheer amazement 
at our magical knowledge, she asked: 

" How did you know? " 

" I saw you; why did you say that you did not do 
it? " With a look of relief that I was not after all 
a magician, the child answered with a perfectly 
frank smile: 



216 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

" Because I did not know that yon saw me/' and 
went comfortably on with her dinner. And I am 
inclined to believe that the shont of laughter with 
which the family quite overwhelmed her, was the 
best possible, as it was surely the most "natural," 
corrective; a far more effective one than any talk- 
ing to or regulation punishment. She joined the 
other fibbers for the time, however, and for a few 
weeks held high carnival in fibbing. She returned to 
her old hair-splitting truth as suddenly as she had 
abandoned it. In some way she discovered 

" What a tangled web we weave, 
When first we practise to deceive," 

though how it would have ended, if that fibbing 
little triad had remained in our neighbourhood, it is 
hard to say. Eidicule and seriousness judiciously 
mixed might have made them, as it did her, feel the 
folly as well as the sinfulness of lying. 

Sometimes children of lively imagination do not 
bother to distinguish between fact and fancy. The 
newspapers related a while ago, of course we cannot 
tell how truthfully, that one of Eudyard Kipling's 
children was sent to bed for telling a lie, and that 
she went, whimpering resentfully that "Papa gets 
lots of money for telling big lies, and I get sent to 



CHILD MORALITY 217 

bed for telling just one little one! " Whether true 
or not the story is apropos. 

Alphonse Daudet leaves a reminiscence of how 
as late in his childhood as twelve years of age he 
indulged in the pleasure of lying. His friend, 
Edmund de Goncourt, in writing of one of his 
visits to him, gives the account as illustrative of 
the dramatic instinct: 

"Daudet told us that once when he was twelve 
years old he had run away from home, I think on 
his first love escapade. He returned somewhat 
frightened, and prepared for a terrible scolding. 
His mother opened the door, and Daudet, yielding 
to a sudden impulse, said to her, ' The Pope is dead.' 
The announcement of such news to a good Catholic 
family threw young Daudet's affairs in the shade. 
The next day he announced that the Pope, who had 
been supposed to be dead, was better, and thanks 
to this fertile power of invention, he escaped the 
scolding and the punishment." 

Unless he was a habitual story-teller, which does 
not appear to have been the case, I would be willing 
to answer for it that the little fellow enjoyed the 
" dramatics " of that experience far more than he 
cared for the escape from punishment. I chuckle 
sympathetically with him as I remember what con^ 



218 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

flicts there used to be in the long, long ago under 
one small jacket, between an honest reverence for 
truth and an intense love of dramatic effects! 

President G. Stanley Hall says: "Thorough- 
going truthfulness comes hard and late, and school 
life is now so full of temptation to falsehood that 
an honest child is its rarest as well as its noblest 
work." 

Now a lie, I grant you, is a vile and dastardly 
thing. A lie will throw any situation out of per- 
spective with the meanest sort of promptness. 
Home, church, school, society, even politics should 
set the current of things mightily against lying, 
"that devouring cancer of the inner man." Jean 
Paul exclaims: 

" The first sin on earth, — haply the devil was 
guilty of it on the tree of knowledge, — was a lie; 
and the last will surely be a lie, too." 

He draws our attention to the contempt which 
every nation has for a lie: " The Greeks, who suf- 
fered their gods to commit as many crimes with 
impunity as their present representatives, the gods 
of the earth do, yet condemn them for perjury, — 
that root and quintessence of a lie, — to pass a year 
of lifelessness under the ground in Tartarus, and 
then to endure nine years of torments. The ancient 



CHILD MORALITY 219 

Persian taught his child nothing in the whole circle 
of morality but truthfulness. The German tourna- 
ments were closed to the liar as well as to the 
murderer. And the English know of no more abus- 
ive epithet than liar." 

Even Jean Paul, who perhaps loved and under- 
stood children as well as any one, does not expect 
great things of them in the matter of truthfulness, 
but calls that virtue the " blossom of man's strength 
of character," and reproaches us that we require of 
" a child whom you have to educate, the last and 
noblest fruits of truth! " 

" The more free the education," he writes, " the 
more truthful the child. All truth-loving ages and 
nations, from the German to the British, have been 
free; lying China is a prison." 

This law, like most laws, is universal; it applies 
equally to nations and to children. The more 
liberal the education of a child, the more likely is 
he to be frank, ingenuous, truthful. And, verily, 
ordered freedom is, as we have before pleaded, best 
for the cultivation of all virtues. 

I trust that it will be understood that I am by no 
means defending lying in children; I am only try- 
ing to have it understood that even as bad a thing 
as lying is, we need not take too seriously to heart 



220 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

the experimenting with it by young children. In 
some children, other elements in the character seem 
to come into conflict with their love of truth, and 
make it necessary for them to need to play with 
lying a little while and discover for themselves that, 
in spite of its attractiveness, in the end it bites. 
We older ones do not always promptly recognise his 
satanic majesty, he has so many ways of making 
himself fascinating! 

Although we have gone far afield to hunt down 
that sin of lying, and get at the true nature of it, 
we must not forget that the aim of this chapter was 
to inspire ourselves with faith in children's own 
natural untaught morality; and to fortify ourselves 
with faith to believe that our part in their moral 
education should be largely, from the very outset, 
to do honour to child-nature, which is naturally self- 
impelled toward moral uprightness and brotherly 
love. Our highest duty toward children is to recall 
them to their true nature when they are unfaithful 
to it; to discover to them the vast chasm which lies 
between liberty and license, and thus to lead them 
to trust the law that is within them that they may be 
worthy to be Free. 

I have observed again that if self-direction, — 
that is,, government from inward motive rather than 



CHILD MORALITY 221 

from outside authority, — is secured when the child 
first begins to feel conscious of his powers — from 
six to sixteen months of age,, we will say, — then it is 
comparatively easy to keep the course of his develop- 
ment running smoothly. It is a fine thing to get 
one's hand on the helm of one's own destiny at the 
very start in life! Too many lives are like a fine, 
full-rigged ship, careering along without ballast, 
and with no steady hand at the wheel. 

" Now," once said a lady to me of her ten-year-old 
child, " it is time that I took her religious training 
in hand." Ah, my dear lady, your best opportunity 
passed ten years ago. You may now put the child 
through the Catechism, and later bring her up in 
snow white for Confirmation, but bless you! the on- 
rush of moral (in this case we feared unmoral) life, 
of spiritual (or unspiritual) thought, has already 
acquired headway. You may be able to guide it 
somewhat; I should surely take my courage in my 
hands and try it if the charge were mine, but oh, the 
divineness of the task had it been undertaken nine or 
ten, or better still, eleven years ago! 

We should not need to prate of "winning the 
confidence of our boys and girls." It is given to us 
at birth; why need we ever lose it? "We may keep 
it by becoming as one of them: 



222 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

" Leave all thy pedant lore apart; 
God hid the whole world in thy heart. 
Love shuns the sage, the child it crowns, 
Gives all to them who all renounce." 

While we are in the company of our children we 
must teach ourselves to live with them; thus shall we 
be a blessing to each other, they to us as much as we to 
them. Eemembering that " Conscious law is King 
of kings," it is ever ours to gradually make con- 
scious to our children the harmony of the laws 
which bountiful Nature has placed within them as 
their birthright gift; then lead them to feel, uncon- 
sciously it may be, but all the more truly on that 
account: 

" My angel, — his name is Freedom, — 
Choose him to be your king; 
He shall cut pathways east and west 
And fend you with his wing." 

And, finally, pray to be always reverential in the 
presence of children; trust them actually, as in theory 
we trust their nature; make each child feel himself a 
free son of God and of Eternity. So shall we " give 
to the child a heaven with a pole-star, which may ever 
guide him in whatsoever new countries he may after- 
wards enter." 



XII 

PRACTICAL MORALS 

"Not the cry, but the rising of the wild duck, impels the 
flock to follow him in upward flight."— Jean Paul Richter. 

Possessing the high faith in children's natural 
rectitude which I have already expressed, it has ever 
been exceedingly difficult for me to formulate schemes 
or methods for their moral and spiritual instruction. 
Of one thing we may be certain, — that the thing 
absolutely first in importance is that they shall always 
be met by those whom they regard as " their own/' 
in entire sincerity and on a high plane. " Morals " 
and "religion" should be their native atmosphere, 
should permeate everything, and be breathed by them 
naturally and as a matter of course. And yet I know 
that some instruction in these things is beneficial to 
children of all ages, even as it is beneficial to instruct 
them upon the necessity of pure air for their lungs. 
Unconscious virtue is the finest flavoured virtue; yet 
virtue which feels and loves and obeys the laws 
which underlie right behaviour cannot fail to mould 

223 



224 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

a firmer character than virtue relying wholly upon 
instinct. 

It is excellent — it is necessary to our highest cul- 
ture — that we not only have the use and enjoyment 
of our knowledge, but also that we shall be familiar 
with the science of it, and moral and spiritual laws 
are but the science of true thought and life. But 
the science of anything, from the very nature of it, 
comes after the knowledge of that thing. Science 
is systematised and recorded knowledge, and there- 
fore presupposes the knowledge. If this is the cor- 
rect view of the case, children should be allowed to 
come upon all knowledge in a natural and accumula- 
tive way, until they get so much of it in any one 
direction that it will be a pleasure to see it organ- 
ised, — to organise it one's self; to begin gradually to 
see a beautiful, harmonious whole in what seemed 
before but isolated facts and laws. I have never, 
however, been able to discover that the knowledge 
of facts of truth, or of behaviour, ought to be come 
upon through the science of them. Grammar and 
many other things, geometry being quite especially 
in my mind, have lost their position among the 
"harmonies," for some of the best minds, by dis- 
regarding this law; the law that accumulation 
should precede systematising, and not be accom- 



PRACTICAL MORALS 225 

panied by it. Wide and comprehensive knowledge 
of anything is of infinitely greater value than the 
organisation of that knowledge afterwards indulged 
in by the scientific mind. A familiarity with flowers 
and their habits, gained through love of them and 
companionship with them, is a thing far beyond 
the mere knowledge of Botany. The art of speak- 
ing and writing pure English, gained through gentle 
breeding and every-day companionship with culti- 
vated people and good writers, is something of a 
higher order than a knowledge of Grammar and 
Ehetoric. The science of Botany is, indeed, a fine 
thing, — for "the mind that loves it"; so also is a 
knowledge of the structural laws of language; but 
it distresses me to see children and youth forced to 
come at things theory-end first; to hear them con- 
jugating verbs in our own or a foreign tongue before 
they can speak correctly. Here, in the country, 
there is a bright ambitious youth about the place, 
who regards himself as a fair scholar in his little 
world, who I am certain could conjugate glibly: 



SINGULAR, 


Plural, 


I am 


We are 


thou art 


you are 


he is 


they are 



Now if he had formulated that conjugation, as he 



226 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

should have been made to do, from his own use of 
the verb, he would have been obliged to recite it: 



Singular. 


Plural. 


I be 


We be 


you be 


you be 


he is 


they be 



which I verily believe would have so astonished him 
that he would forever afterwards have felt that 
there is some connection between the science of our 
language and the speaking of it, which seems now 
to be an idea that has not yet dawned upon him. 
Indeed, the youth said to me frankly: " Grammar 
don't have nothing to do with my talking; I talk 
just as I'm a mind to." 

Concerning the teaching of morals and the de- 
velopment of character and right behaviour, I find 
myself reasoning in the same way. Morality, even 
spirituality, grown into through a natural adjusting 
and attuning to others in a moral and spiritual en- 
vironment, is quite beyond a character attained with 
much accompaniment of set teaching. Conscious 
virtue is apt to be Pharisaic. We do not need a 
code of morals for children. The d^ily beholding 
of never-failing pity for the suffering, delight in 
others' happiness, and indignation at cruelty and 
injustice, will lead children to " Eejoice with those 



PRACTICAL MORALS 227 

that do rejoice and weep with those that weep/' far 
more effectively, if there is not too much wording of 
the situation. Moreover, the mind, later on, will 
be found in fresher, more impressionable condition, 
— not perhaps to be taught moral and spiritual laws, 
but to search tentatively for them. All dealings 
with children should, from the outset, be on a taken- 
for-granted basis that there is in them a natural 
responsiveness to everything good, and of repulsion 
to all that is evil. What Miss Sullivan writes of her 
deaf -blind pupil, Helen Keller, may with profit be 
regarded as what would be true of every normal 
child: 

" Surrounded by loving friends and the gentlest 
influences, as Helen had always been, she has, from 
the earliest stages of her intellectual enlightenment, 
willingly done right. She knows with unerring 
instinct what is right and does it joyously. She 
does not think of one wrong act as harmless, as 
another of no consequence, and of another as not 
intended. To her pure soul all evil is equally un- 
lovely." 

Later on Miss Sullivan writes with confidence: 
" I believe every child has hidden away somewhere 
in his being, noble capacities which may be quick- 
ened and developed if we go about it in the right 



228 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

way; but we shall never properly develop the higher 
natures of our little ones while we continue to fill 
their minds with the so-called rudiments. Mathe- 
matics will never make them loving, nor will the 
accurate knowledge of the size and shape of the 
world help them to appreciate its beauties. . . . Chil- 
dren will educate themselves under right conditions. 
They require guidance and sympathy far more than 
instruction." 

I always feel too much reverence for childhood, 
too much dread of interfering with Nature's inten- 
tion with them, to quite do my whole duty by them. 
I like to let the beautiful creatures alone; to let 
them follow their own leading and chase after their 
own ideals; to learn from them rather than to teach 
them. Yet for all that, I get the greatest pleasure 
and profit from reading the inspiring things which 
have been written upon the subject of moral and 
religious education of the young. In fact, I depend 
upon the reading of such things to keep myself in 
a right attitude toward children; but write them 
I cannot, although I did do a little of it when I was 
younger, and felt somewhat less fear of rushing in 
where angels fear to tread. In spite of the ideal- 
isation of childhood, I have had ample experience 
with children to know, as all parents know, what a 



PRACTICAL MORALS 229 

disturbance and what care they often are. I know 
well, too, that we cannot leave children to their own 
sweet will and call it education. We must somehow 
in our weakness and imperfection, manage to 
possess ourselves of what wisdom, and patience, and 
courage we may, to meet and cope with the head- 
strong energy, the passions, the self-centred activi- 
ties, of our children; to reward, punish, impel, or 
restrain, guide or leave free, as occasion requires or 
our feeble wisdom dictates. 

I am attempting no full discussion of the teach- 
ing of morals; I am undertaking only to present a 
few fragmentary thoughts on one or two sides of the 
question which have never been emphasised quite 
to my liking. Let us first consider together for a 
little concerning punishments. The word has a 
harsh, unloving sound; it grates on the ear; it 
savours of revenge, of "paying out," and children 
too often so regard it. Penalty is a more fitting 
word, but that, too, is a hard, relentless one; still it 
carries with it more the idea of justice, a penalty 
being somewhat of the nature of a consequence of 
the wrong-doing. Jean Paul likes to call it " after- 
smart." There are many theories in vogue concern- 
ing punishment. Childhood, for many centuries, was 
made a veritable hell in consequence of religious 



230 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

faith in the divine efficacy of it. The case of Mar- 
tin Luther's twenty-three corporal punishments in 
one day is not an isolated one in history. We know 
better now than to regard them as the only cure- 
all for the trip-ups of faltering childhood. We 
know now that punishments should be few. Ideally 
there should be none. But we are not ideal and 
the god of punishment must have his altar. But 
since they must be, the feeling so common among 
educators, that that is a wise one which is a con- 
sequence of the wrong committed is, indeed, a 
reasonable feeling, and is a theory to be carefully 
reckoned with by Pedagogues and Parents. I can- 
not, however, refrain from having a wee bit tilt 
with its champions concerning the lengths to which 
they push the principle. For instance, Spencer, in 
his zeal, quotes the proverb " A burnt child dreads 
the fire/' and suggests that it is often well even to 
allow the child to get burned a little in order to 
learn the power of fire and be cured of playing with 
it. I have known of several cases in which his 
followers have adopted this suggestion with a 
thoroughness positively so cruel as wholly to deprive 
it of any of its supposed naturalness. A burnt 
child will doubtless dread the fire, — somewhat. 
But it's rather a characterless one that will give up 



PRACTICAL MORALS 231 

the acquaintance of so beautiful a friend as Fire, 
just because that same Fire got the better of it for 
once. It is far more "natural" for the child to 
go back to the fire and "be more careful next 
time." 

"We tried that Spencerian method with our first 
child; we were trusting then, and theoretic. Our 
baby put out her little hand continually toward the 
" pitty light " of the candle. We said' " no no," for 
a proper period, then we looked sorrowful and 
allowed the child to put her poor little finger into 
the blaze. Tears came and the little mouth 
puckered; ours, too. After a long look, the ex- 
perience was repeated; then again and again until 
in sheer pity we put an end to the experiment. 
That child always loved fire and fire-poking. And 
she had her fill of it all through her childhood. 
We used to have famous times with her, and with 
the others after they came, finding out which things 
would "burn pretty." "Would I burn pretty?" 
she asked as she caressingly stroked her soft skin 
before the fire after her bath. At seven she came 
near getting an answer to that question; she had 
been carelessly left alone for a moment in the room 
with a year and a half old brother. The little one 
got hold of a fly-whisk, somehow got it into the 



232 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

open fire, and was brandishing it wildly about the 
room. We heard a scream, and rushing to the 
rescue, found the girl skilfully jamming the fiery 
torch into the grate, meanwhile calling lustily for 
help; a valiant illustration of " skinning right along 
and praying as you go." The point is, that the 
next day, in spite of the fright and the singeing, she 
was just as much at home with her old friend, Fire. 
Nor were we surprised; vigorous children do not 
abandon a good thing because it has a spice of dan- 
ger in it, else whence have come our Lincolns, our 
Deweys, and our Nansens? 

We ought to be sure that a punishment is really 
natural, and not artificially natural, before we pro- 
ceed with too certain a hand. Even the revered 
Abbott, prophet of the naturalness of Gentle Meas- 
ures with Children, seems to me to have too much 
faith in these artificially "natural methods." The 
following is an instance, which I quote verbatim 
from that deservedly popular educational classic: 

MARY'S WALK 

"Mary," said Mary's aunt, Jane, who had come 
to make a visit to Mary's mother in the country, 
"I am going to the village this afternoon, and if 
you would like you may go with me." 



PRACTICAL MORALS 233 

Mary was, of course, much pleased with this in- 
vitation. 

" A part of the way/' continued her aunt, " is by 
a path across the fields. "While we are there you 
must keep in the path all the time, for it rained a 
little this morning, and I am afraid that the grass 
may not be quite dry." 

"Yes, Aunt Jane; Fll keep in the path," said 
Mary. 

So they set out on the walk together. When 
they came to the gate which led to the path across 
the fields, Aunt Jane said, " Eemember, Mary, you 
must keep in the path." 

Mary said nothing but ran forward. Pretty soon 
she began to walk a little on the margin of 
the grass, and, before long, observing a place 
where the grass was short and where the sun 
shone, she ran out boldly upon it, and then, look- 
ing down at her shoes, she observed that they 
were not wet. She held up one of her feet 
to Her aunt as she came opposite to the place, 
saying: 

" See, aunt, the grass is not wet at all." 

"I see it is not," said her aunt. "I thought it 
would not be wet; though I was not sure but what 
it might be. But come," she added, holding out her 



234 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

hand, "I have concluded not to go to the village, 
after all. We are going back home." 

"Oh, Aunt Jane! " said Mary, following her aunt 
as she began retracing her steps along the path, 
"what is that for?" 

" I have altered my mind," said her aunt. 

" What makes you alter your mind? " 

By this time Aunt Jane had taken hold of Mary's 
hand, and they were walking together along the 
path towards home. 

" Because you don't obey me," she said. 

"Why, auntie," said Mary, "the grass was not 
wet at all where I went." 

" No," said her aunt, " it was perfectly dry." 

"And it did not do any harm at all for me to 
walk upon it," said Mary. 

" Not a bit of harm," said her aunt. 

" Then why are you going home ? " asked Mary. 

" Because you don't obey me," replied her aunt. 

As I cannot see that anything is more natural for 
a burnt child than to be more careful next time, 
neither can I see anything in this little girl's 
punishment but pure unnaturalness. Theoretically 
the child ought to have reasoned: "We lost a 
pleasant walk and I displeased my dear auntie just 



PRACTICAL MORALS 235 

because I was disobedient. I will never be dis- 
obedient again." But nine out of ten youngsters, 
and they would be the brightest ones, would reason 
more after this fashion: "Isn't Auntie funny? 
Just for a little thing like this! Anyway, I don't 
care! She got the worst of it! I wouldn't give 
up anything I wanted to do for such a little thing. 
The grass wasn't wet, anyway! " And then she 
would go picnicking, perhaps, and reflect how lucky 
she was not to have lost the fun of the picnic just 
for a little walk to the village! 

As for "natural consequences," is it not a most 
natural consequence that parents' love should shield 
their children from results of their frailty? And 
no one is quicker to discern this and reckon upon 
it than the shrewd little youngsters themselves. 
So when we make them take consequences which 
would without our intervention be natural ones, 
they are likely to reason, and it is natural enough 
that they should: "Anyway, they might have let 
us off; they could have if they'd wanted to; they're 
real mean." Many a child has been alienated from 
parents on these lines. What are parents for if 
not to shield children from too heavy suffering from 
their weakness and helplessness ? It is natural that 
love should overtop everything, and none so keen 



236 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

to discern it as children. However, we have nof 
overmuch to fear perhaps on that score. If your 
boy disobeys you, plays with his gun and wounds 
himself, he is exactly as sure of your sympathy and 
tender care as though the wound had been the result 
of some accident on the way to Sunday School. 
Eoger Ascham, the famous schoolmaster of Queen 
Elizabeth's time, writes in his famous book: 

"Learning teacheth more in one year than ex- 
perience in twenty; and learning teacheth safely 
when experience maketh more miserable than wise. 
He hazardeth sore that waxes wise by experience. 
An unhappy master is he that is made cunning by 
many shipwrecks; a miserable merchant is he that is 
neither rich nor wise but after some bankrupts. It 
is costly wisdom that is bought by experience; we 
know by experience itself that it is marvellous pain 
to find out a short way by long wanderings." 

Experience is indeed an unkind teacher. That is 
why we say so often to our children, "Let your 
head save your heels "; and fortunate is he who 
has the wit to do it. Our children, even with our 
most loving solicitude, will be sufficiently forced to 
feel the rod of experience. Let us not fear where it is 
possible, to take short cuts with children in morals as 
in arithmetic. We had a neighbour once who had 



PRACTICAL MORALS 237 

three sons. He Had begun life at the bottom and 
gained riches. After he had given his boys an 
indulged childhood and allowed them as much 
education as they would take, he had but one maxim 
for them: " Now begin at the bottom as I did. The 
only way is to begin at the bottom and work up." 
In spite of his passionate love for them he dis- 
couraged and alienated every one of them. Noth- 
ing could make him see that what necessity had 
made true discipline for himself, became, without 
that necessity, an unkindness, arbitrarily imposed; 
and that by " learning," his sons might start many 
steps up the ladder and in congenial company. 
Children should perceive love and interest in their 
welfare illuminating every relation between them 
and their parents and their teachers; and love 
shields and protects. For this reason punishment 
should be administered only as a last resort; it is, in- 
deed, a mute confession of failure somewhat back on 
the line, which failure must now be righted. But 
when it must actually be resorted to, as it too often 
must, it is wise to have it as far as possible, self- 
curing on the part of the small sinner. 

Two quite small boys began going to school at the 
same time. They both immediately took up the 
dismaying habit of swearing. One of the mothers 



238 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

promptly whipped her boy at every offence till she, 
at least, heard no more of it; the other one per- 
suaded and discussed with her boy about the matter 
and was puzzled that she could make not a bit of 
impression upon. him. At last she exclaimed in 
dead earnest: 

" Now see here, young man, this must be stopped. 
Who is to stop it, you or I? Tell me why it is that 
you think you must swear like a little pirate." 

"Well," replied the child in equal dead earnest, 
"I think I'm big enough to swear; and I'm big 
enough to smoke, too; and I'm going to save up my 
money to buy me some cigarettes, and I mean to 
practice running till I can run faster than any boy 
of my age! " 

He meant to attain rapidly to the honours of big- 
boyhood! And now the mother saw in it only mis- 
conceived ambition; her task became a simple one. 
She had him name over all the men of his acquaint- 
ance that he considered " first-rate " men; his 
father, his uncle this and uncle that, and the 
friend who had lately beatified him by giving him 
a " regular man's foot-ball "; and not one of them 
had he ever heard swear! Almost laughingly she 
made him see how he had chosen the wrong sort 
for his ideals. He listened thoughtfully when she 



PRACTICAL MORALS 239 

explained to him that now that he was going out 
into the world to be a "big boy/' he would meet both 
sorts, but that he would want to line up with the 
best. The boy's self-respect was retained, which was 
a great triumph, for self-respect is a mighty element 
in the making up of character. He who respects 
himself will be respected. To respect one's self so 
much that he will not, nay cannot, soil himself by 
wrong-doing is the highest attainment of manhood. 
Cultivate as a precious plant, the self-respect of chil- 
dren; the tendency of arbitrary punishment is to 
destroy it. 

Is it not wise, too, to govern children by motives 
which shall be permanent? motives which shall go 
right on serving in youth and manhood, when motives 
of fear can have no more power? It has often been 
observed that children who have been governed too 
much by fear and by punishments are far more apt to 
have a season of sowing wild oats, than are those who 
are led to be self-governing. 

"Vices, the common vices of the people," writes 
Condorcet, " come from the need of escaping ennui 
in moments of leisure, and in escaping from it 
through sensations and not ideas." Give children, 
then, full resources for enjoyment and usefulness. 
Give them ideas. In short, give them a liberal 



240 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

education. Give them a true education that shall 
cultivate all the faculties and powers; fill them with 
high ideals; make them self -resourceful in the con- 
sciousness of power, and ahle to discover oppor- 
tunities for exercising that power. And above all, 
lead them to the highest summit of self-control. 
Tor our encouragement we may remember that 
every virtue, mental and moral as well as physical, 
contributes to beauty and poise. John Euskin 
mournfully calls attention to the " otherwise beauti- 
ful faces of women," spoiled by lack of intellectual- 
ity — argument, by the way, for the higher education 
of women. 

This influencing, rather than directly teaching, 
may seem more the function of the parent than of 
the teacher. Not so. It is the chief function of 
both. When a little friend of mine, good in all 
his lessons, but spelling, was kept in despair on 
account of not getting a decent mark in anything 
because the teacher counted the spelling in every- 
thing and he " couldn't spell," I believe that child got 
far more moral harm in the sense of injustice done 
him, than he got of benefit in spelling, if indeed, he 
got any, which is doubtful. How much higher was 
the course taken by one of the teachers of my 
childhood's days. There was a girl in our class who, 



PRACTICAL MORALS 241 

conscientiously and long as she might study, always 
got a third or a half of her words wrong. She was, 
like Eobert Louis Stevenson, one of those whom we 
meet occasionally, who have a genius for wrong spell- 
ing! At last the teacher discussed the matter with 
the class, and explained to them that the girl's rank 
was no just estimate of her scholarship. In the end, 
on a motion of one of the boys, it was voted that 
this particular girl's mistakes in spelling were to be 
divided by four, and her mark in spelling to be 
reckoned according to the result. Now see what a 
host of charming little virtues was cultivated in that 
one small act; generosity, chivalry, kindness, grati- 
tude, justice, and an honourable and affectionate class- 
spirit. But that teacher was ever a magician among 
teachers! (I get it strongly into my head that with- 
out justice in these small matters, it is almost useless 
for a teacher to preach little preachments on justice 
and truthfulness, when children's sense of justice is 
violated by their being marked low, for instance, in 
arithmetic, although everything is correct, just be- 
cause they haven't spelled " answer" correctly, or 
because they haven't "done it the right way," or 
remembered to arrange it as they were told. ) 

An incident of my own school life illustrates this 
point. Years have passed, yet the thrill of it is upon 



242 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

me as I revert to it. Fresh from the Boston Gram- 
mar School, I was on my way to examination for 
entrance into the long anticipated High School. 
The only fear I had was for my oral arithmetic. 
Of the written I felt sure. The ponderings under 
my jacket as I trudged resentfully along were of 
this rebellious sort: " Outrageous mean! I can get 
their old answers in a minute, but I'll never be able 
to say those old explanations!" and so on, and so 
forth, all the way. To my delight and surprise I 
was ushered alone with the examiner into the ex- 
amining room and told to "just give the answer"! 
Could anything be finer? I grew three inches on 
the spot. But to this day it seems to me too 
pathetic that notions of school justice should have 
been of such a character that that simple act of 
pure fairness could produce in me a sense of grati- 
tude that has lasted all these years. Besides the 
injustice of things of this sort, which prevail far 
too much in the schools, and even in the homes, 
there is in it a discouragement often beyond the 
childish powers of resistance. Encouragement is 
the very thrill of life; we need it ourselves; how 
much more the children. Life is a dead, dead thing 
for any of us without it. Professor James writes a 
good word on this subject: 



PRACTICAL MORALS 243 

" Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot 
of his education. If he keep faithfully busy each 
hour of the working day he may safely leave the 
final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty 
count on waking up some fine morning to find him- 
self one of the competent ones of his generation in 
whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently 
between all the details of his business, the power of 
judging in all that class of matter will have built 
itself up within him, as a possession that will never 
pass away. Young people should know this truth 
in advance. The ignorance of it has probably en- 
gendered more discouragement and faint-hearted- 
ness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all 
other causes put together." 

One other thought and this long, and perhaps, in- 
coherent chapter shall have an end. It is upon the 
subject of Eeverence. No character can be ideal 
without the fragrance which Eeverence gives it. 
In the every-day world Eeverence takes the form of 
a natural attitude of respect toward things high and 
true and real. And this is the only attitude that 
children should ever perceive in their Pedagogues 
and Parents. Eeverence is the chief source of 
humility, and humility is the one virtue which makes 
possible the attainment of wisdom and knowledge. 



244 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

I mean reverence for all things worthy — the Good, 
the True and the Beautiful, and especially for the 
great Unknowable. In young children Eeverence is 
as natural as the very breath of life. A little girl 
of four stood by the window in her nightdress lojok- 
ing out for a moment upon the big dark world be- 
fore going to bed. She waved her tiny hand to 
include all the lights of the small settlement spread 
out before her, and exclaimed softly, " Good-night, 
all the homes! " I cannot reason you out the logic 
of it, but I am certain that that act was the very 
essence of love and reverence for humanity, — the 
wisdom revealed unto babes. (It is the height and 
depth of educational art to retain through the 
whole of life, this child-like simplicity of goodness, 
and of love for our fellow-beings. The character of 
unspoiled children has an undercurrent of ideality 
which we may ever envy them. -Let their frailties 
"be mentioned softly and gained upon by time," 
while we devote ourselves to the cultivation of this 
ideality by keeping them, as far as we can, in a 
current of high thoughts and worthy deeds, even as 
the channel of a stream, if kept clear, will by its own 
force, rid itself of debris as it broadens and deepens 
on its journey to the sea. 
Let us live in good comradeship with our children. 



PRACTICAL MORALS 245 

(The parental function is one of the highest if not 
absolutely the highest, pertaining to manhood and 
womanhood, and should not be "entered into 
lightly or unadvisedly," but with the utmost 
reverence. , If we wish sincerity in our children we 
must ever be sincere; if we wish frankness and truth 
and accuracy, they must never see in ourselves any 
swerving from these; if we wish for them courtesy 
and politeness which are real, they must receive 
these at our hands. ) When parents feel all this, 
and are of intelligent, liberal, generous spirit, they 
seldom go far astray with their children. 

It is not that parents need to be perfect. Im- 
patience, forgetfulness, the half-thousand frailties 
common to weak mortals, children pass over lightly, 
loving and respecting us none the less. They form, 
indeed, a common bond between us and them. But 
one little false note, one shilly-shallying with the 
right, one ever so little hesitancy when duty is plain, 
one injustice unatoned, — ah! there's the rub! We 
must be utterly incapable of these things. Nor is 
that expecting too much of ourselves, 



XIII 

THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 

44 What, then, are children really ? Their constant pres- 
ence and their often disturbing wants conceal from us the 
charms of these angelic forms, which we do not know how to 
name with sufficient beauty and tenderness, — blossoms, dew- 
drops, stars, butterflies, — but when you kiss and love them, 
you give and feel all their names ! A single child upon the 
earth would seem to us a wonderful angel, come from some 
distant home, who, unaccustomed to our strange language, 
manners, and air, looked at us speechless and inquisitive, but 
pure as Rafael's infant Jesus. . , . And daily from the un- 
known world these pure beings are sent to the wild earth; and 
sometimes they light on slave coasts, or battle-fields, or in 
prison for execution, and sometimes in flowery valleys and on 
lofty mountains; sometimes in a most baleful, sometimes in a 
most holy age ; and after the loss of their only father they seek 
an adopted one here below."— Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. 

" The child is doubtless an embryo angel, but no less cer- 
tainly a possible devil."— Elizabeth P. Peabody. 

44 Who can declare for what high cause 
This darling of the gods was born? " 

44 Some children are born into this world with tickets bought 
and baggage checked on an express train for Hell." 

Maevellous, and marvellously eloquent and forci- 
ble, are the thoughts which have been thought and 

246 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 247 

the words which have been written concerning child- 
hood and children. But whatever else we of to-day 
may think of childhood, let us never be tempted to 
believe that by inheritance, by Nature's limitation 
of their possibilities, or lack of this limitation, 
children are destined at birth to become " darlings 
of the gods," or are doomed to perdition. We may, 
perhaps, believe, that in point of talent or genius, 
the limit of a human being's possible attainment is 
already, by inheritance, denned at birth. But can 
we, without violence to the very highest thought of 
the divine scheme of things, believe in the foreor- 
dination of moral character for any normal human 
being? " Foreordination of evil! " It should be a 
phrase not in the educational vocabulary! In 
humiliation and honesty we should hold ourselves 
responsible for the whole of what we have in mind 
when we use that accusing phrase! We may be 
sure that it was distress at the sight about him of 
"fine souls wrecked by mal-education," which led 
Wordsworth to write that sad story of two of 
them in his "Kuth." Youth begins in the glory 
which is native to it: 

" With hues of genius on his cheek, 
In finest tones the youth could speak 
. . . while he was yet a boy." 



248 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

By lack of love and tenderness and pure environ- 
ment 

" His genius and his moral frame 
Were thus impaired and he became 
The slave of low desires/' 

The whole story of many lives ahout us is in these 
two stanzas. Time must, and surely will, do away 
with the pitiless environment into which so many 
children are born, and so soon get to be almost past 
redemption. Am I my brother's keeper? I surely 
am! Yet it is too probable that our present inter- 
pretation of Christianity will, for some time to 
come, continue to leave adult human beings free to 
finish out their fortunes for good or ill, as they 
choose to or are able. But as to Childhood! We 
are at least, the keepers of Humanity's children! 
Every infant born into this world is the ward of 
Humanity. I have faith to believe that we- are 
already launched in a current of solicitude for child- 
hood, which is bearing us swiftly toward a state of 
Christianity whereby we shall see to it, as a matter 
of decency if not of love, that every child shall be 
given a hospitable reception when it arrives on this 
planet, and shall be tenderly cared for and guided 
during its helpless years. At first we shall do it 
largely from an economic standpoint. But let us, 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 249 

for the credit of Humanity and of Christianity, do 
all we can to hasten the time when we shall do it 
from pure Love. We are, indeed, on the eve of the 
first stage, and are beginning to believe that, 
humanity aside, it is wise to spend our money and 
what brotherly love we have, in preventing the 
making of criminals, rather than in trying to cure 
them after we have allowed them to be made'. Many 
noble men and women are to-day devoting them- 
selves to the children's problems. One of the finest 
among things recently accomplished in New York 
and some other cities, is the establishment of a 
Children's Court. Delinquent juveniles are no 
longer summoned before the same judge, in the same 
place along with two or three hundred adults, all 
awaiting their turn together, to be summarily dis- 
posed of as drunkards, thieves, and other law- 
breakers. They now have a court of their own, 
with a judge of their own, who may, and who does 
take time to understand each case, by getting him- 
self into the attitude of mind of the young culprit, 
and finding out about home conditions and other 
environment. Only judges are chosen for these 
positions, who are especially interested in juvenile 
delinquents, and effort is made as far as is possible, 
to have all sentences remedial and reformatory — 



250 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

even as would be done by a wise and judicious 
parent. If all the world could be brought to listen 
to a few scores of the pathetic stories of these little 
offenders, as related by the sympathetic judges, the 
children's case would be won. 

Effort is being made to have these children's 
courts established in all cities. And the saddening 
part of it is, that although appeal is made to the 
humane side of the question, yet, in order to in- 
fluence the great body of voters and tax-payers, the 
business side of it must be brilliantly shown up, 
namely, that, independent of the benevolent side of 
it, it pays. It pays, inasmuch as we of the United 
States now spend, as they tell us, $500,000,000 per 
year for the care and sequestration of criminals, 
and therefore, every child reclaimed from the 
criminal class is a saving to the state! It is good 
to do these things from any motive, but when the 
love of Humanity shall be so great that Public 
Opinion will refuse, at any price whatsoever, to 
endure the sight of one little child uncared for, 
then, we may feel that we are in truth beginning to 
have right foundational ideas of Education — and of 
religion. 

We know now that children are not totally de- 
praved, unregenerate little aliens from God, to be 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 251 

redeemed by us; no more are they blank sheets of 
paper to be written upon, or clay in the hands of 
the potter. Each one of them is a bundle of possi- 
bilities of — we know not what, whose rightful birth- 
right is an environment and wise guidance which 
shall enable him to work toward the attainment of 
his yet undiscovered possibilities.) 

Children! In very truth what are they? Jean 
Paul's "Delicate flower-gods of a soon fading 
Eden/' or Fourier's "devilkins"? "Unruly brats 
with birch to tame/' or "gems that glitter while 
they live"? 

They laugh, they weep, they love, they hate; they 
fib, they pilfer; "they are mirrors of ingenuous 
truth "; they are soft and gentle, they are fiery little 
furies; they are our delight, our despair. What- 
ever else they are, they are energy and activity 
rampant, and — they are ours. Ours it is to provide 
for them; to conduct them forward (if it be not 
backward) out of their charming realm into our 
work-a-day world. How shall we meet the merry, 
careless, lawless, irrepressible, irresponsible brigade of 
little possibilities? Had we not better haste and 
form ourselves into a protective union? 

But seriously, and to be " practical "! First of all 
we must expect every normal child to be a personi- 



252 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

fication of activity. No normal child is ever idle; 
he is either playing or working, thinking or eating, 
or sleeping, or resting; and that last occupation of 
resting is usually as far from idleness as any of the 
others. Of these " silences " Carlyle writes: 

" In them great things fashion themselves to- 
gether, that they may at length emerge full formed 
and majestic, into the daylight of life." 

What form shall this perpetual activity be helped 
to take? A vigorous child of nine once gave un- 
conscious answer to the question, when she ex- 
claimed, with flashing eye and lusty emphasis, "I 
think children ought to play; they hate to work." 

I have often wondered if, provided all did it so 
that there were no shame to any, it wouldn't be the 
best possible thing for children, to require them to 
do nothing but play until they were a dozen or four- 
teen years old! The higher the species the longer 
its childhood and coming to maturity! Ours it 
would then be to see that they were able to get at 
what they needed for their desires and schemes — to be 
their aiders and abettors. In fancy we can see the 
toy forts and bridges, wharves and houses and con- 
trivances of all sorts. Of course we should read to 
them, theirs to dictate how much, and when and 
even what! and books would be left lying about. 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 253 

What an opportunity for the free development of 
the faculties! — which is, is it not? the gist of Educa- 
tion itself. What an opportunity for the free dis- 
covering of foundational morals, and the finding 
each of his level among his fellows! One wonders 
if every one of them would not learn to read and 
write and cipher, and get all sorts of book learning, 
"just for fun," and by force of natural ambition, 
even to fuller success than now they do; and learn 
also to be kindlier, more courteous and helpful. 
Again and again I have wondered and questioned 
within myself whether it would not be so, so surely 
does assisted freedom more than coercion, bring 
forth things of beauty and strength! Well, we shall 
not know, for we shall not have faith or courage 
to try it. 

This, however, we may be sure of, that play will 
always be at its maximum in the first years, grow- 
ing less and less as age advances, and that work will 
be at minimum, growing more and more as play 
grows less; work and play being about evenly divided 
somewhere between the ages of twelve and sixteen. 
Our fifteen-year-old daughter exclaims, when asked, 
" Sixteen! not a bit earlier! " One wonders if 
children wouldn't, by the scheme of playing out 
their childhood days, come into their life work with 



254 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

such freshness and zest and enjoyment that it would 
be transformed into play, and life be all play! All 
best play is large part work and all best work should 
be large part play, play being denned as voluntarily 
chosen activity. So we come to the new gospel of 
work, taught by Euskin, Morris and others. 

"Play is the first and only occupation of our 
childhood, and remains the pleasantest one our 
whole life long. To toil like a beast of burden is 
the sad lot of the lowest, the most unfortunate and 
the most numerous class of mortals, but this is 
contrary to the intent and wish of Nature. . . Take 
away from life what is the enforced service of iron 
necessity, and what is all that is left but play? 
Artists play with Nature; poets with their imagina- 
tion; philosophers with their ideas; the fair sex with 
our hearts, and kings, alas, with our heads! " 

Let us then, young and old, play all we can. 
" Being a child must not hinder becoming a man; 
becoming a man must not hinder being a child. ") 
Let us all therefore have our due proportion of 
play, for play is but overabundance of life, flowing 
into the form of voluntarily chosen activity. 

Have not the conceit to believe that a child knows 
a thing because you have told it to him. He needs 
to question and doubt it, to examine it on all sides, 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 255 

to apply it; in a word, to play with it. It is not 
his very own knowledge till he has done all that with 
it. We prate of "need of discipline." Is it not 
true discipline to be given freedom to bring all the 
powers into play, and to focus them on the getting 
dominion over the earth? That is the "Big 
Thing" children love to do! And is twelve, or 
fourteen, or even sixteen years, too long a time in 
which to play with, and give meaning to, all the new 
and strange and wonderful things which the child 
comes upon when he enters this big complex world? 
I suspect that it is not what we with our artificially 
"natural" methods, and scientific arrangements 
and logical orders, give to children, that is the best 
part of" their equipment for life. Are not those the 
best things which they have discovered for them- 
selves, or gotten from their comrades? — provided 
we have not generated in them too much " artificial 
stupidity," which is too sadly likely to be the case. 

"It is perfectly certain that two in every three 
children are irretrievably damaged or hindered in 
their mental or moral development in the schools; 
but I am not sure that they would fare better if they 
staid at home.") 

If I quote often from Chamberlain and Chamber- 
lain's quotations, I can only plead as did the western 



256 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

school-teacher concerning Shakespeare: "He ex- 
presses my sentiments fine!" 

Youngsters need to roam over the whole field of 
knowledge from the very start, and come up to their 
limit in all directions before they are content to 
settle down seriously to the business of detailed 
inquiry, and hard plodding after " knowledge." 
This seems to be the way Human Eace did it. We 
Parents cannot be psychologists; in spite of the 
clear definition in the Introduction of this book, 
we cannot wholly comprehend " Culture Epochs " 
either in the race or in the child. We wonder if 
Pedagogues do. Yet we can in a general way, per- 
ceive the thing mistily, and even get help and 
encouragement from it. We do, in our wide ex- 
perience with children, discover and appreciate 
many things about them which we call common 
sense, and sometimes they seem to us to be almost 
the same things which the child-studiers call " re- 
capitulation." And science and common sense 
ought to have contact and agreement somewhere, 
else one or both of them is unsound. 

The matter-of-fact and continual observation of 
parents leads us to notice a good deal concerning 
these various stages in a child's life which the child- 
studiers call "Culture Epochs." We observe our 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 257 

children closely from birth; we go into the nursery 
and put pencils into two-day-old fingers and marvel, 
as Darwin did, that a tiny infant will hang there- 
upon for a marvellous number of seconds; only, not 
being accurate scientists like Darwin, we don't 
write it down; that is, the wisest of us don't; we 
don't dare to trust ourselves, albeit we do sometimes 
have the fever to record, as he recorded. Once 
upon a time, we and another pair of Parents, 
planned to do it together and compare notes, but we 
got discouraged. At three months the parents of 
the other baby recorded it as having " cried to go to 
ride." Our baby had cried, but we couldn't feel 
sure whether it had cried to go to ride or not; we 
presumed it had; we didn't know anything to the 
contrary and hoped that our baby was up to the 
other baby, but we got puzzled. We felt more 
fully than we ever had before, an appreciation of 
Max Midler's attitude on this subject: 

" The observers of babies," he writes in his 
autobiography, "mostly young fathers, proud of 
their first offspring, remind me always of a very 
learned friend of mine who presented to the Royal 
Society most laborious pages containing his life-long 
observation on certain deviations of the magnetic 
needle, and who had forgotten that in making these 



258 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

observations, he always had a pair of steel spectacles 
on his nose." 

But, as I said before, we Parents have in our way- 
done a good deal of observing, and most of us I 
think, have noticed several things. 

I. That it is most excellent for children to have 
a big supply of things to do with, and plenty of time 
for free play. 

II. That the later they get into harness and 
have the reins pulled taut over them, the better. 

III. That it is absolutely criminal to overdrive 
them, since it hurts them, not temporarily but, as it 
would a young colt, for life. 

IV. That reasoning, even when they seem to 
follow it, affects them, either mentally or morally, 
about as much as rain affects a house when it falls 
on the properly shingled roof of it, they being 
creatures of instinct and emotion, not of reason. 

V. That a child really does pass through stages, 

somewhat as the Race did, and that we should not 

allow ourselves to be so hard-headed as to force 

him to reason out mathematics at an age when it 

seems 

" As if his whole vocation 
Were endless imitation," 

and then set him to learning foreign languages when 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 259 

this age is over and the reasoning faculty is fiercely 
at work in him, but that we should let him do all 
things according to the law of nature. 

VI. That, morally, they stand stubbornly still 
when club-driven, but go gaily on when led with 
banners flying. 

All these things we think we are fairly sure of, 
and of some others besides. But these will suffice 
for the present. Concerning III, the early pushing 
and heavy pressure brought to bear on school- 
children, too strong warning cannot be uttered, nor 
be too often reiterated. Many parents complain 
bitterly of the home work of the younger children, 
and wails everywhere go up on account of the high- 
pressure system of the High Schools. A High- 
School girl told me the other day that in her class 
they were required to commit to memory every 
Latin lesson entire, consisting of a page or more of 
Cgesar, and this five times a week, in addition, of 
course, to exacting demands from the teachers of 
the other studies. Every word that Mr. Harris 
writes on the subject of education is so sound and so 
wise that it makes us wish that he would take us 
Parents in hand, and write us a book on our duties 
and privileges, and would write it so simply, so 
" popularly," that we could have it for a sort of 



260 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

educational Bible, to be picked up and enjoyed at 
all hours of the day, between the homely tasks of 
our busy lives. On this subject he writes: "It is a 
matter of every-day comment that much memoris- 
ing deadens the power of thought. But it is equally 
true that memory may paralyse the power of sense- 
perception, imagination, and will." 

When remonstrated with for permitting too high 
pressure being put upon their children, parents have 
but one reply: " What can we do? " When I urged 
upon one young girl who was rapidly breaking 
down, " Health is of far more worth than learn- 
ing," she replied: " You have to study if you 
go to that school." She was unable to finish the 
year. 

There have always been wise ones in every age 
and generation to sound the danger-call concerning 
this thing. 

"If the higher faculties," writes Spencer, "are 
early taxed by presenting an order of knowledge 
more complex and abstract than can be readily 
assimilated; or if, by excess of culture, the intellect 
in general is developed to a degree beyond that 
which is natural to the age; the abnormal result so 
produced will inevitably be accompanied by some 
equivalent or more than equivalent evil." 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 261 

And again he writes: 

"We contend, then, that this over-education is 
vicious in every way; vicious as giving knowledge 
that will soon be forgotten, vicious as producing a 
disgust for knowledge, vicious as neglecting that 
organisation of knowledge which is more important 
than its acquisition; vicious as weakening or 
destroying that energy without which a trained 
intellect is useless; vicious as entailing that ill 
health for which even success would not com- 
pensate, and which makes failure doubly bit- 
ter." 

Huxley writes of those who are too much forced 
in early life: 

" Like early risers they are conceited all the fore- 
noon of life and stupid all its afternoon. The 
vigour and freshness which should have been stored 
up for the purposes of the hard struggle for exist- 
ence in practical life, have been washed out of them 
by precocious mental debauchery, by book-gluttony, 
and lesson-bibbing; their faculties worn out by the 
strain put upon their callow brains, and they are 
demoralised by worthless, childish triumph before 
the real work of life begins. ("The power of work 
which makes many a successful man what he is, 
must often be placed to the credit, not of his hours 



262 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

of industry, but to that of his hours of idleness in 
boyhood." 

One more from among the multitude of them; 
this from the long-ago Plutarch: 

"For, as plants by moderate watering are nour- 
ished, but with overmuch moisture are glutted, so 
is the spirit improved by moderate labours, but over- 
whelmed by excesses." 

The disregard of these natural phenomena of 
childhood; the getting too early into harness; the 
overdriving; the taxing of incipient reason; the 
hammering at cold iron instead of waiting till 
Nature heats it for us at the proper period; all 
these things dispel the effervescence arising from 
the pleasure of acquiring knowledge, disperse the 
" visions splendid " of youth, and rob life's halo of 
its rightful brightness. The children submit, even 
with half content, for the unthinking little things are 
unconscious of their birthright and their loss of it. 

"Men have always reverenced prodigious inborn 
talents, and always will," says President Eliot. I 
believe that Nature has been more prodigal of them 
than we realise. But they are often delicate and are 
overborne, or are set to grow on too stony ground. 
They are not given freedom enough. Did you ever 
go to a maple " sugaring off "? I went to one a long 



THE CHILDREN THEMSELVES 263 

time ago when the operation was cruder, but more 
picturesque than now. Out in the grove they built 
their big fire and hung their kettle over it. How the 
sap seethed and boiled in it in endeavour to escape 
its bounds! A watcher was by, and whenever the sap 
threatened to boil over he tossed in a piece of ... I 
think it was salt pork! Down instantly went all 
that enthusiasm. Over and over again it happened; 
it depressed me; why could they not have the pot big 
enough? It was senseless of me, sentimental! But 
even to this day when I recall the scene, the thought 
of it gives me the same sense of regret. Why could 
they not have had the pot big enough? 

It is exactly like that, that the enthusiasm, the 
surging bubbling life of children is suppressed in the 
schools. I sometimes think we need not look farther 
than this for answer to the questions, "What be- 
comes of all the bright children? " " Why do we not 
in manhood and womanhood, fulfil the high promise 
of childhood? " " We are born under a law; it is our 
wisdom to find it out and our safety to comply with 
it." But surely that law cannot be to cripple in 
order to control! To keep down natural activity in 
order to save ourselves the care of directing it into 
proper channels, even as animal-trainers starve their 
animals in order to subdue them. 



264 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

What then? We meant to have this chapter a very 
" practical " one, and here we are once more in 
Utopia, with our chapter of sufficient length. We 
meant to have had our say-so on the various sins of 
childhood, quarrelsomeness, impertinence, ill temper, 
etc. But many have discoursed wisely upon these 
subjects, and we will leave the children right here 
upon Utopian soil, for which my reader will long ago 
have discovered I have a strong liking. Well, who 
doesn't? But children, especially, are safe there. 
V. In conclusion, let us then, bring children forward 
as best we may with the minimum of punishment, 
leading, inciting, enticing, beguiling, encouraging, 
and sometimes coercing. If we find the task too ideal 
for our unideal, undivine capabilities, let us all the 
same, go cheerfully forward. Not one of us is perfect; 
so can our ways not be. But face always toward the 
Mecca. Eead unstintingly, observe continually, and 
ponder all these things in your heart. Have patience 
and charity infinite, pressing onward trustfully, 
hopefully, not foreboding evil; for have we not all the 
forces of the universe with us in this divinest of 
tasks, that of conducting children out of childhood 
into the full stature of the Sonship of God? 



XIV 

PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

" A body of cultivated men, devoted with their whole hearts 
to the improvement of education, and to the most effectual 
training of the young, would work a fundamental revolution 
in society."— William Ellery Changing. 

" The future of American civilisation and the rich blessings 
of republican institutions will be assured if we can interest the 
best talent of the country in education, and evolve a school 
system which shall be as nicely adjusted to our national re- 
quirements as the German system is to German needs."— 
James E. Russell. 

There is a pedagogic "body of cultivated men, 
devoted with their whole hearts to the improvement 
of education "; the best pedagogic " talent of the 
country " is interested in education. But the trum- 
pet-call is now to all of us, to the Parent as well 
as the Pedagogue. Wisdom parental and wisdom 
pedagogic are complemental; they should be joined in 
marriage never to be put asunder. The iteration and 
reiteration of this sentiment must be pardoned in the 
light of the fact that it is the one central and insist- 
ent thought around which this entire book is written. 

Home and school work independently of each 
265 



266 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

other, impelling the child, as may chance, in the 
same, or in opposite direction. In the entire history 
of education, we search in vain for any impress of the 
parental hand. The role of the parent, in the long 
past, has been wholly one of trustfulness, of def- 
erence, almost of reverence, toward learning and all 
institutions of learning. Such relationship has 
doubtless been necessary in the past. It is no longer 
necessary; yet to-day it is the same. No honoured 
goal is recognised toward which home and school 
mutually trend. In justice it must be admitted that 
Pedagogues do always have high ideals for which 
they work with earnestness and zeal. But it is only 
the occasional parent who recognises the ideals of the 
school, or who has for his own children, ideals of any 
sort toward which he strives consistently, — unless, 
indeed, it be money-getting. The well-being of our 
children is the chief interest of us all; but we trust 
the routine of things. We hold ourselves too much 
in the attitude taken by the English ministry at the 
time when " Chinese " Gordon was left to his fate: 
" They threw the puzzle into the air," writes Hake, 
Gordon's resentful biographer, " and hoped to see its 
pieces come down in proper order, all accurately 
fitted together into an allegorical picture of economy, 
happiness, and universal suffrage." 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 267 

As a body, Parents are in that same comfortable 
frame of mind with regard to the education of their 
children. They reason: — "We pay heavy taxes for 
the schools; we expect the schools to take good care 
of the education of our children. "We give them into 
the care of the schools exactly as we turn them over to 
the doctor when they are sick." But we should not 
do that thing. There cannot be a body of educa- 
tional experts as there can be of medical experts. 
Physicians may, in session assembled, and in actual 
presence of the human skeleton, learn all there is to 
know about the bones of the human body; the dissect- 
ing room may furnish knowledge for the doctoring 
of us all, nabob and beggar alike. But who may 
dissect a human soul? " Where," asks a French 
writer, "can you apply a thermometer to test the 
temperature of a soul? " Pedagogues are not educa- 
tional experts; neither are Parents; it requires both 
to do educational work. 

Mr. Pellatt, a schoolmaster of England, writes 
truly, " Thories upon education have an absorbing 
fascination for all schoolmasters possessed of the 
true teaching instinct." Pedagogic thought and 
feeling and judgment are, indeed, largely the out- 
come of strong, intellectual, reasoned-out theory. 
Parental thought and feeling and judgment are the 



268 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

outcome of experience, interpreted by Nature's 
strongest motive forces, parental instinct and love. 
Pedagogic zeal fits children to its schemes; parental 
instinct fits its schemes to the children. The one 
without the other is as the strenuous day without the 
restful night; as the work-a-day world below, with- 
out the serene heavens above; is as the father without 
the mother; useless each without the other. The 
home and the school should be the two halves of a 
harmonious educational whole. 

Of the story of his own education President 
Dwight writes: 

" If there is any suggestion which it offers it is, I 
think, that of the importance of family life in giving 
the impulse to intellectual growth." 

All through that most interesting series of How I 
was Educated papers, as in most autobiographies, 
this idea is of constant recurrence. " Have the right 
father and mother." And liberal-minded parents of 
to-day are beginning to rouse themselves to a feeling 
of this responsibility; to feel a personal interest and 
concern in the education of their children. The 
number is every day increasing of John Locke's 
parents "whose concern for their dear little ones 
makes them so irregularly bold that they dare venture 
to consult their own reason in the education of their 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 269 

children, rather than wholly to rely upon Old 
Custom.". But the institution of the Public School 
is a thing of dismaying size and momentum. It has 
not yet occurred to Parents, even when discontented, 
to interfere with the workings of it, or to take their 
rightful attitude toward it. Of the dissatisfied ones, 
those who are able take their children from the 
Public Schools and place them — wherever best suits 
their ideas; the rest criticise, or grieve, or complain, 
according to temperament, and chafe under their 
helplessness. But there certainly is a spirit of un- 
rest among Parents of to-day. They are patient, 
but there is everywhere discernible a spirit of ques- 
tioning; of wonderment as to whether their children 
are receiving the individual uplift and send-off in 
life, which they have a right to expect. There are 
mutterings, some of them loud ones, of too much 
pressure in the High Schools; of over-burdening 
home work, of too long hours of close confinement, of 
too much book- work with not enough of doing, of too 
little attention to the individual pupil. And surely 
the yoke of the Public School is not easy nor its bur- 
den light. 

Why, however, should Parents complain? Com- 
plaint is not the attitude we should take. The 
Public School is an institution our very own; its 



270 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

corps of instructors are our paid assistants. They 
are doing magnificent work, but they are working 
without our sympathy or cooperation or oversight. 
We do not think of dealing like that with any other 
paid-for service rendered us. A wholly pedagogic 
one-sidedness in our school-service is the natural re- 
sult, and nobody is at fault but the parents them- 
selves. 

We may well ask ourselves, "Are we, even the 
educated among us, competent to enter intelligently 
into council and conference with our highly-trained 
educators? " We may surely answer that we are not. 
Parents do not now train themselves for their part. 
Let us, however, once perceive the duty of our share 
in the responsibility, and it will be far otherwise with 
us. How then can Parents fit themselves for intel- 
ligent, acceptable cooperation with Pedagogues? 

To begin with, some study of the simple, underly- 
ing laws and principles upon which character is 
formed should be taught as a part of the finishing 
course in the Education of every young man and 
woman, or better still, should permeate the entire 
course. It may be thought that we are already doing 
that in placing psychology on their list of studies, 
but that is doubtful; at all events, it is not what I 
mean; I mean a study of the actual, practical, mani- 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 271 

fest principles upon which character has been built, 
as exemplified in the lives of successful men and 
women. The minds of youth are eagerly competent 
to understand and revere these laws, if concretely 
studied and comprehended. Both young men and 
young women could be led to read with intense profit 
and pleasure such things as the above-mentioned 
How I was Educated papers, so full of human 
nature, and human nature's ambitions, struggles, and 
final triumphs. The first chapters of biographies, 
especially of autobiographies, are fine, instructive 
reading; they are a beguilement to the finish, and 
lead to that most illuminating method of coming at 
histor}^ through the lives of men who have been the 
centres of momentous epochs. Do not select just 
those lives which seem to point a moral; take any 
which have been successful, from the soft youth of 
Ebers to the strenuous, early life of Lincoln, or the 
forced one of John Stuart Mill. Have these lives 
discussed and compared in class. In studies of 
" applied psychology " of this sort, the simpler and 
more evident laws of life and progress and success 
would loom up and impress themselves upon the 
minds of youth; would furnish a living foundation 
for the future study of psychology; would make 
young people more considerate of childhood; would 



272 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

tend to lay a good foundation for character, ambition, 
and service, and of parental wisdom for later needs. 
Such currents of thought once set in motion, gather 
momentum; inculcated in school, academy, and col- 
lege, they would make almost impossible among 
young parents such every-day " generation of artifi- 
cial stupidity" and criminality as one continually 
comes upon as the following: 

" What makes the cars go? " asked a child ahead of 
me on the train. The mother laughed and stopped 
talking with her neighbour long enough to answer: 

" The engine/' 

"What makes the engine go?" 

" The steam, goosey/' 

After a pause: 

" What makes the steam make the engine make the 
cars go?" 

"For the fun of it afterwards!" laughed the 
mother with a staring glance at the boy which said 
too plainly, " How can you be so stupid? " 

The mother was a well-dressed intelligent-looking 
woman; so was the one who passed under my window 
one day dragging a small child by the hand. 

"What are them things?" asked the little one 
pointing to a team of oxen going by. " What are 
them things? " Over and over at intervals of about 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 273 

thirty seconds, till the two were out of hearing, and 
not a word in reply! 

And how many parents tell lies to their children 
all through their impressible years, then are heart- 
broken that their children take turn-about at it in 
later years? 

" Koger, come right back here this instant! Snake 
down there! " called out a young mother neighbour of 
mine yesterday. I naturally looked out to see what 
danger my little friend Eoger was getting into. The 
two-year-old adventurer was hesitating before his 
mother called, but at this lie I was revengefully de- 
lighted to see him start cautiously forward with neck 
outstretched: 

" Snake! Snake! Want see snake! " 

" If I have to come down there after you I shall 
whip you," came from the disappointed mother. 
But the child continued peering around after the 
snake, and the mother came down. She snatched 
him up in her arms and kissed him rapturously: 

"Why don't you come when mamma calls you, 
you darling little idot? " 

Two lies in one lesson, for this child's first course 
in mendacity! 

It should get to be the natural and regular order 
of things to be rational and honest with children, 



274 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

even as it is fast getting to be the order of things to be 
rational and humane in our treatment of dumb 
animals. 

Again, to induce this close understanding between 
Pedagogues and Parents, we might have regular mass 
meetings for addresses and discussion, somewhat like 
those which Pedagogues now have among themselves, 
but with both sides represented. Do you fancy that 
such meetings would not be well attended? If they 
were rightly arranged and if they were made 
interesting, I feel absolutely certain that they would 
be enthusiastically supported. Little as it may 
seem so, parents have the education of their 
children more intensely and ambitiously at heart 
than almost any other interest in their lives. It is 
only because this strong interest has no proper 
outlet of expression that it does not more fully 
appear. 

Some sort of Pedagogue and Parent Paper, too, or 
magazine, if made interesting, ought to win for itself 
such a place that it would be the magazine or paper 
oftenest found in cultivated homes. Education 
should be, among adults, a taken-for-granted topic 
of conversation. Such a paper or magazine would 
reveal educational ideals to Parents, and give sugges- 
tions how to cooperate in attaining them. It would 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 275 

keep Parents in the current of educational progress, 
give educational news, and lists and reviews of good 
books to be read by pupils of the various grades, and 
by Parents; it would help, through the Parents, to 
swerve children from that great, destroying stream of 
sensational reading. 

A paper of this sort, in connection with periodical 
mass meetings like those mentioned, would bring 
Parents into an understanding of, and cooperation 
with the ideals and aims of school work, of which they 
have now little appreciation; for instance, the im- 
portance of having youth acquire power and right- 
eousness even more than so-called knowledge; of 
governing them, not by fear of punishment, but by 
motives that may serve permanently through life; of 
being on the watch to make early discovery of in- 
dividual bent, and to encourage it; — and of a hundred 
other things. 

President Eliot writes: 

" Let us remember that the moral elements of the 
New Education are individual choice of studies and 
career among great, new varieties of studies and 
careers, early responsibility accompanying this free- 
dom of choice, love of truth, now that truth may be 
directly sought through rational inquiry, and an 
omnipresent sense of social obligation" 



276 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

The same sentiment comes forth from the pen of 
President Barnard: 

" A man's education must be mainly his own work. 
He may be helped and he may be embarrassed greatly 
by his environment, but neither books nor teachers 
nor apparatus nor other surrounding conditions of 
any kind, will be of any avail unless he himself 
furnish the energising spirit which shall put them to 
account. A mind is not moulded as an earthern ves- 
sel is fashioned by the hand of a potter. It moulds 
itself, by virtue of an inherent force which makes for 
symmetry or deformity according to the direction 
given to it by consciousness and will." 

President Bartlett says likewise: 

"The man that is thoroughly master of his own 
powers will master any sphere or theme to which he 
is called/' 

The ring of these ideals is a new one in this genera- 
tion. Parents should educate themselves up to it, 
and the home and the school be brought into the 
closest cooperation for rousing in the souls of the 
pupils response to its clarion call. And this coopera- 
tion is of far more moment to Parents than to Peda- 
gogues. It would be a tremendous influence in help- 
ing to disarm unsympathetic criticism of the schools; 
it would almost surely keep school matters out of the 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 277 

hands of politicians; it would make it easy, when 
necessary, to arouse public sentiment in favour of 
needed appropriations for the schools. More im- 
portant than any of these things, perhaps, it would 
result, with absolute certainty, that Parents would 
ultimately find themselves on Curricula and other 
committees, which decide important educational ques- 
tions. There are many of these important questions 
being settled to-day. We should not shirk the re- 
sponsibility of assisting in the settling of them! 

G. Stanley Hall, among others, writes sadly of the 
increase of juvenile criminality: 

"Although pedagogues make vast claims for the 
moralising effect of schooling, I cannot find a single 
criminologist who is satisfied with the modern school, 
while most bring the severest indictments against it 
for the blind and ignorant assumption that the three 
E's, or any merely intellectual training, can 
moralise." 

No idea is more trustfully ensconced in the hearts 
of parents than that education will make their chil- 
dren "good." They have a right to feel that it is 
so, and, as I have before said, they have high faith in 
educators. But we are supinely dreaming when 
we hold teachers responsible for the virtue and moral 
strength of our children. Ideally, the highest moral 



278 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

influence must ever emanate from the home, the 
school in full alliance with us at every turn. The 
intellectual centre should of course be the school, — 
but intelligently reinforced by the home. Education 
should be one, — not home education and school 
education, but Education. 

We had in Boston a summer or two ago, and we 
have it somewhere every year, a most triumphant and 
successful Teachers' Convention. I cannot help hop- 
ing that in the not too far away future, such gather- 
ings will be called by a different name, and that 
layman and laywomen will be in as full evidence as 
teachers. An unprejudiced looker-on at that con- 
vention might have imagined that he perceived just 
the same pedagogic atmosphere as one feels in the 
schools; an atmosphere generated in the study and 
the class-room. It savoured of assurance. It had a 
strong note of self -congratulation. It was erudite. 
But it lacked completely the elements which a solid 
contingent of Parents would have imparted to it. 
Parents have little assurance. They hold their 
breath. They proceed cautiously, following their 
children somewhat. They have not erudition; they 
have instinct and practical sense. We ought to have 
been in it. 

We ought to be in everything which concerns 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 279 

education. I believe it would be a surprise to the 
great body of parents if they realised how many 
thoughtful people are questioning whether it is profit- 
able to send young men and women to college. So 
true is this that George Gary Bush, in his Higher 
Education in Massachusetts, tells us that " The pro- 
portion of those who pass through a college course 
grows smaller with each advancing decade." Presi- 
dent Eliot has proved to us the same fact by statistics. 
Mr. Bush asks if the decline may not be " due to the 
increasingly high standard which the college sets, 
and be, in reality, an indication of progress/' But 
President Eliot attributes, as part cause of this fall- 
ing off, the insistence of colleges in giving pref- 
erence to Greek and Latin, and even to mathematics, 
over other and newer forms of knowledge. That 
single cause has quite probably been a sufficient one 
to effect the result, for eager is the pursuit of youth 
after the "new knowledge" of the present genera- 
tion., Many feel as Mr. Adams wrote in his A 
College Fetich: "Do what he will no man can keep 
pace with that wonderful modern thought; and if I 
must choose — and choose I must — I would rather 
learn something daily from the living who are to 
perish, than daily muse with the immortal dead." 
But whatever has been the cause of scepticism con- 



280 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

cerning the value of college education, one of the 
promptest things long ago effected by a good under- 
standing between Pedagogue and Parent would have 
been either the removal of the cause, or the justifica- 
tion of it. Probably indeed, the falling off would 
never have occurred. 

Again; a conference of over three years' duration 
has been going on between the faculty and the over- 
seers of Harvard University, concerning a revolu- 
tionary change in its admission requirements, which 
has at last culminated in letter if not wholly in 
spirit, in the placing of " other knowledge " on a par 
with the classics. This subject has been discussed 
and decided upon with no manifestation of interest, 
or influence, on the part of the great body of parents, 
who have been almost in utter ignorance, indeed, that 
such a discussion was in progress. For parents, 
especially the parents of scientifically minded youths, 
how important is the decision! Yet the utmost 
concerning the matter which has seemed to get 
thoroughly into the minds of Parents, is a 
vague, satisfying consciousness that it has at last 
"been fixed so that you can go to college without 
Greek! " 

Dr. S. H. Butcher, in Some Aspects of the Greeh 
Genius, writes; 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 281 

"From Greece came that first mighty impulse 
whose far-off workings are felt by us to-day, and 
which has brought it about that progress has been 
accepted as the law and goal of human endeavour. 
Greece first took up the task of equipping man with 
all that fits him for civil life and prompts his secular 
well-being; of unfolding and expanding every in- 
born faculty and energy, bodily and mental; of striv- 
ing restlessly after the perfection of the whole, and 
finding in this effort after an unattainable ideal, 
that by which man becomes like to the gods/' 

Munroe, in his Educational Ideal, felt justified 
in saying of Rabelais: 

" He taught truth and simplicity, he ridiculed 
rrypocrisy and formalism, he denounced the worship 
of words, he demanded the study of things, he showed 
the beauty of intellectual health, of moral discipline, 
of real piety. Best of all he enumerated the su- 
preme principle of nature which is ordered free- 
dom." 

Thus this "first mighty impulse" was given 
momentum more than two thousand years ago; and 
Rabelais lived in the sixteenth century. If so far 
back as that, the foundational principles could get 
discovered; if, in the dissipated life about him, a 
recreant, but observant man of the world, could re- 



282 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

discover them, and a whole procession of torch- 
bearers be found to pass on the educational light 
through all the intermediate generations, surely we 
ought by this time to have gotten farther out of laby- 
rinthic obscurity in practical educational matters! 
In theory, we are, indeed, somewhat well out in the 
open; but we still mass our children in phalanxes to 
be what we call " educated." 

Yet, too much still, is the fresh, strong young will 
suppressed; eager individuality is still too much 
effaced; too much still do our youth come forth from 
school " machine-made men." 

How shall we dare accuse European nations of 
making machines of men by compelling them, during 
so many of their career-shaping years, to yield obe- 
dience to their vast war machinery? Individuality 
must be left behind when men enter that machine; 
will must be soothed to slumber. So, too much, must 
our boys and girls bid farewell to individuality and 
will, when they start in on one of our eight or nine 
or ten year curricula. " Who is going to prevail? " 
asked a teacher of a little fellow who had brought 
back his home work all correctly done, but clinging 
to his own arrangement of it, " who is going to pre- 
vail?" 

" I don't know," replied the child wistfully. 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 283 

" I am," said the teacher firmly, " next time do it 
the regular way like the others." The boy had 
simply trimmed his work up in red ink! Doubtless 
he was looking forward to the teacher's praising it as 
" pretty "; but should the teacher once begin to allow 
departures it could not be foretold where it would 
end ! The teacher " prevailed " ! 

It was exactly thus that the French Louis XIV. 
" prevailed " and preserved uniformity in his king- 
dom by relentless persecution of his loyal and indus- 
trious Huguenot subjects, although by " prevailing " 
he set back the progress of his country, so say the his- 
torians, for a century or so. It was a big price that 
the French nation paid for Louis' famous proverb: 

" Un roi, une loi, une foi; 
L'etat, c'est moi." 

It is a big price, too, that we are paying for uniform- 
ity in our schools. And why, pray, do we pay it? 
Why, in our children's education, do we lag in prac- 
tice so far behind the shining light of theory? Is it 
for lack of money? Most certainly not. We are a 
rich nation and we have the custom of affording 
whatever we really desire. Is it for lack of interest? 
Not at all. Our educational force is made up of a 
class of men and women, high-minded, zealous, con- 



284 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

scientious. Why then should it be possible for a man 
like Superintendent Dutton to feel like writing: 
" Education in this country has clung too closely to 
old ideals and conditions and has not adapted itself 
easily to new situations " ? Somehow I cannot help 
feeling that Parents do "adapt themselves more 
easily to new situations." In the school it is the 
scheme which is the constant thing, but in the home 
the parent is ever shifting the scheme to fit the vary- 
ing needs of the child. " No nation which is virtu- 
ous and vital will ever be a slave to the past/' writes 
Edwin D. Mead in his The Principles of the Found- 
ers; " at the command of virtue and of vision it will 
snap precedent like a reed." Parents are compelled 
to be continually snapping precedent like a reed! 
Children are not bashful in the home, and they force 
parents to prompt adaptation. 

In the Harvard Graduate Magazine we read: 
" The subject of education forces itself on us all 
nowadays, whether we will or not, and is likely to 
grow more, rather than less, insistent. For well- 
nigh a century we Americans pointed to our Public 
School system as if it had always been perfect and 
would always remain so, and required no more atten- 
tion from anybody. Only in our own generation has 
this fallacy been exploded." 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 285 

The passionate love of youth for the " new knowl- 
edge" has been a large element in the explosion, 
and will have to be a large one in the gradual recon- 
struction which is too haltingly taking place. So, 
also, has the unrest of parents, and that, too, will 
have to be taken account of. 

" Victory is assured," writes the above-quoted Dr. 
Butcher, "to those who see things as they are, and 
shun illusion, and who at the same time, summon to 
the aid of thought, a sustained and courageous energy. 
In the divorce between thought and deed, between 
speech and action, Demosthenes truly saw the flaw 
that was destined fatally to impair Greek conduct 
and character." 

G. Stanley Hall and his inspired Worcester coterie 
may continue to surprise and delight us with educa- 
tional insight; college presidents may continue to 
write for us books winning our highest admiration; 
money may be lavished for the luxurious housing of 
our schools and for books and apparatus; but it re- 
mains obstinately in my mind that we shall not easily 
shake off the " divorce between thought and deed," 
this "flaw" in our educational system, until the 
natural cooperation is established between the two 
departments of education. In the preface to his 
great work, Adolescence, just published^ G. Stanley 



286 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

Hall writes with great feeling and sympathy of the 
age of transition from childhood to youth: 

" Youth awakes to a new world and understands 
neither it nor himself. The whole future life de- 
pends on how the new powers now given suddenly 
and in profusion are husbanded and directed. 
Character and personality are taking form; but every- 
thing is plastic. Self-feeling and ambition are in- 
creased and every trait and faculty is liable to exag- 
geration and excess. It is all a marvellous new birth, 
and those who believe that nothing is so worthy of 
love, reverence, and service as the body and soul of 
youth, and who hold that the best test of every human 
institution is how much it contributes to bring youth 
to the fullest possible development, may well review 
themselves and the civilisation in which we live to 
see how far it satisfies this supreme test." 

This is surely a trumpet-call to teachers. It is as 
surely a trumpet-call to parents. 

Let parents humbly fit themselves to act their 
part. With loyalty to schools and school-workers, let 
us yet have the courage of conviction which comes to 
us through close intimacy with childhood. Let us 
consciously and conscientiously enter into knowledge 
and appreciation of what is going on in the educa- 
tional world. How shall we do this? 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 28? 

I. Bead. Bead enough of the history of education 
to understand the birth of this " New Education "; 
to catch the spirit of it and feel its trend. 

Just now, to write freely on the subject of Educa- 
tion seems to be one of the functions of college presi- 
dents and professors. The books and papers they 
write are finely inspiring. Bead them all! At 
least all that you have time for and can enjoy. 
They are a spiritual tonic. Thus you shall discover 
for yourself how each and all, though in a different 
manner, are struggling to set flowing the big, clear 
current of modern educational thought, namely: that 
education is not knowledge-getting chiefly, but the 
growth of fully developed power, with the law of 
righteousness established within for the control of it. 
Bead. Bead everything that is good on the subject 
of education. Beading of this sort is culture of the 
highest kind, independent of its utility. As soon as 
it shall be the vogue for Parents to read and discuss 
largely concerning educational topics, there will 
surely come forth a flood of reading, profitable and 
interesting for Parents. From this reading, and 
more still from actual experience and observation, 
formulate your own ideas and theories, and have the 
fearlessness and faith to abide only by what theory 
and experience shall agree upon. Only never wear 



288 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

theory within sight; keep it well within the sacred 
precincts of the mind and heart. What a glorious 
thing for us, both in the matter of grace and strength, 
is that skeleton of ours with its two hundred and 
six bones, all working continually for us with easy 
adaptability! But should we not be thankful to 
artistic Nature for not ordaining that we must 
wear the uncanny thing on the outside! Let the 
virtue, but not the bones, of our theories appear. 

II. Visit the schools, not censoriously, but sympa- 
thetically. Do not be impatient — with the teachers. 
Large bodies move slowly. So far as possible follow 
in detail what your own children are doing and be- 
coming. Be sure that they themselves feel that they 
are on God's highway, not groping about in bypaths. 
Cooperate with the teacher even if she isn't doing 
things exactly as you would like to see them done, 
always, of course, keeping your own ideals well in 
mind. Eemember that hearty work on an inferior 
plane is often better than criticised and lagging work 
on a higher one. 

III. Consider it your office, not the teacher's, to 
keep a hand on the brakes. You are the one to 
preserve the physical, mental, moral, and social health 
of your children. Do not permit them to be wrecked 
or stunted or subdued, even though they miss a little 



PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 289 

"knowledge." When children are overworked, 
Nature is as likely to punish us by wrecking their 
morals, as their bodily or mental health. Be "ir- 
regularly bold" enough to call "down brakes!" 
rather than allow children to go too long or too 
wearily to tasks. 

IV. Last and most important; be watchful! Have 
faith in the intimations which Nature has planted for 
our guidance in the instincts and longings of the 
children themselves. While they are learning of us 
we may learn even more of them. So shall we fulfil 
the highest law of parenthood, which is for our own 
refining as much as for the well-being of childhood. 

Have at all times the courage of conviction, con- 
cerning your own individual children. (*Be ever on 
the alert to spread the belief that it is not necessary 
that children go forward all alike in ranks.) Custom 
weighs heavily upon us in this matter! And who 
is brave enough to set himself up against " Old Cus- 
tom"? Only he who is great dares defy Custom. 
Let us strive to be great enough to defy her in this 
long-established, deep-rooted belief, that children 
cannot be given individual care when educated in 
numbers. We may, however, take heart. To visions 
made prophetic by love and ambition, fearlessness 
and faith, and fortified by true culture, the fallacy 



290 PEDAGOGUES AND PARENTS 

of this belief is already beginning to be made 
apparent 

On the loving-cup presented to President Eliot on 
the occasion of his seventieth birthday is the inscrip- 
tion: "In grateful acknowledgment of his devotion 
to the University for 35 years and of his passion for 
justice, for progress, and for truth." With the ideal 
home and the ideal school ever unobscured in our 
minds, let us all work together with that same " pas- 
sion for justice, for progress, and for truth." / Only 
together shall we find grace and strength to so satisfy 
the cravings of childhood that men and women may 
not too overwhelmingly feel their lives 

" A crying out for light that has not shone; \ 
A sowing of sweet seeds that will not spring.'^) 



THE END 



TWO BOOKS BY THE LATE 

FRANCIS A. WALKER 

President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 



DISCUSSIONS IN ECONOMICS AND STATISTICS 

Edited by Professor Davis R. Dewey. 

With portrait. 454 + 481 pp. 2 vols. 8vo. $6.00 net. 

Important papers on Finance, Taxation, Money, Bimetallism, Eco- 
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author had hoped to himself bring these papers together. 

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collection the editor has not included everything General Walker ever 
wrote, but has aimed, so far as possible, to avoid repetitions of 
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the period following the Civil War, which have a timely as well as his- 
torical interest at the present time. . . . To improve the census was 
General Walker's work for many years, and his experience cannot fail 
to be of interest to the present generation. . . . Economics in the hands 
of this master was no dismal science, because of his broad sympathies, 
his healthy, conservative optimism, his belief in the efficacy of effort ; 
and, in a more superficial sense, because of his saving sense of humor 
and his happy way of putting things .... he was the fortunate pos- 
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could have been no more fitting monument to his memory than these 
two volumes, together with the other volume of ' Discussions in Educa- 
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familiar illustration and appeal to fact, and always interesting. Cer- 
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or wide scope of subjects covered by these shorter articles .... one 
can almost hear the spoken word in some of the adresses .... an 
excellent index." 

DISCUSSIONS IN EDUCATION 

Edited by James Phinney Munroe. 342 pp. 8vo. $3.00 net. 

The author had hoped himself to collect these papers in a volume.' 

The Dial .■ " A fitting memorial to its author. . . . The breadth of his 
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but so candid and generous that it left no festering wound." 

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XX 1900 



il One of the most important boohs on music that has ever been published." — . 
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covering Richard Strauss, Cornelius, Goldmark, Kienzl, Hum- 
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LAVIGNAC'S 

Music and Musicians 

Translated by WILLIAM MARCHANT. 

With additional chapters by HENRY E. KREHBIEL on 
Music in America and The Present State or the Art of Music. 

With 94 Illustrations and 510 examples in Musical Notation. 518 pp., nmo, 
$1.75 net. By mail, £1.91. 

Cfl A brilliant, sympathetic and authoritative work cover- 
ing musical sound, the voice, musical instruments, con- 
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musical cyclopedia, with some thousand topics in the index. 

W. F. APTHORP in the Transcript :— 

Admirably written in its way, capitally indexed, and of genuine value 
as a handy book of reference. It contains an immense amount of 
condensed information on almost every point connected with the art 
which it were well for the intelligent music-lover to know. . . . Mr. 
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Well worth buying and owning by all who arc interested in musical 
knowledge. 

W.J. HENDERSON in the N. Y. Times:— 

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of the manner of using the instruments of the orchestra, with some 
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. . . Counterpoint is discussed with great thoroughness. ... It 
seems to have been his idea when he began to let no interesting topic 
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... It will serve as a general reference book for either the musician 
or the music-lover. It will save money in the purchase of a library by 
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HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 

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LUCAS' A BOOK OF VERSES FOR CHILDREN 

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«# 



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Cheerful Americans 

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^ Seventeen humorous tales, including three 
quaint automobile stories, and the "Ameri- 
cans Abroad" series, "The Man of Patty," 
"Too Much Boy," "The Men Who Swapped 
Languages," "Veritable Quidors," etc. 

N. Y. TIMES SATURDAY REVIEW 

says of one of the stories: "IT IS WORTHY OF FRANK STOCK- 
TON." The rest of the notice praises the book. 

N. Y. TRIBUNE: 

"He is unaffectedly funny, and entertains us from beginning to end." 
NATION: 

"The mere name and the very cover are full of hope. . . . This small 
volume is a safe one to lend to a gambler, an invalid, a hypochondriac, 
or an old lady ; more than safe for the normal man. . . . The boolc 
should fulfil a useful mission on rainy days, and on kerosene-steeped 
evenings in those spots of earth where men and women do congregate." 

N. Y. COMMERCIAL ADVERTISER: 

"His opera-Douffe portrayals of American types are distinctly enjoy- 
able. Most of us have met them or their next of kin in real life. . . . 
The volume is abundantly illustrated, and the artists have admirably 
caught the spirit of the author's humor." 

BOSTON TRANSCRIPT, 8-19-03: 

"A new and very interesting collection. . . . Of the seventeen stories in 
the book there is scarcely one not marked by an originality of plot and 
an abundance of healthful humor. . . . He who reads the first story will 
read them all and wish for more." 

CHICAGO TRIBUNE: 

"The title is a stroke of genius. The book is sanely American and 
one of the cheeriest books published in a long time. . . . The humor is 
natural, the characters well drawn, and the style simple and unaffected. 
. . . The automobile stories, while distinctly original, suggest Stockton 
in their serious absurdity. . . . When Mr. Loomis has written another 
volume or two like it we will treat him like the other immortal and 
drop the Mr." 

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 

NEW rORK. % O.'o** CHICAGO, 



"The best single help to the study of Parsifal 

with which I am acquainted ... for its purpose, the book has 
no adequate fellow."— H. E. KREHBIEL in the Introduction. 



KUFFERATH'S WAGNER'S 

PARSIFAL 

Translated by Louise N. Henermann. 

XVIII + 300 pp., l2mo, $1.50, net (by mail, |l.6l). 

This remarkably comprehensive book contains an Introduction by H. E. 
KREHBIEL ; eight full-page illustrations in halftone of the scenery at 
the Metropolitan Opera House ; The Motifs in Musical Notation; Chapters 
on The Legend, History and Poetry; The Perceval of Chretien de Troies; 
The P arrival of Wolfram Von Eschenbach; The Drama {Wagner's); 
The Genesis of Parsifal; The Bayreuth Performance; The Score. 

MR. KREHBIEL further says in his Introduction ; 

"The production of "Parsifal " in New York was the most notable 
occurrence compassed by the annals of the lyric stage in America. 
" Parsifal " stands apart, not only from all other operas, but also from 
the lyric dramas sprung from the same creative mind. It is not easy 
to find the properest frame of mind in which to approach it. . . . If 
any work of dramatic art invites study and is likely to repay it, it is 
" Parsifal." It was necessary that a scholar should gather into a com- 
pendium the most important things discovered by the investigation of 
specialists, which throw light on Wagner's work, add to its charm, 
and present it lucidly, entertainingly and convincingly to the many. 
This M. Kufierath has done. His book stands quite alone in the field 
of Wagneriana. . . . Kufferath makes many a pretty walk into by- 

f>aths which Wolzogen never knew . . . more voluminous, more de- 
ightful than the one on the score, and equally valuable, are the chap- 
ters devoted to the vicissitudes of the Grail legend before Wagner 
seized upon it as dramatic material ; the story of how the work grew 
in Wagner's mind ; the account of its first performance ; the exposi- 
tion 01 the philosophy of pity and its relation to Wagner's personal 
character and religious speculations; and, finally, the exposition of 
the drama itself. . . . Kufferath's German origin lent him serious- 
ness of purpose, sympathy with Wolfram Eschenbach's poem, and the 
capacity for patient research ; his^ French breeding and literary train- 
ing, deftness of touch and skill in narrative; his musical learning, 
capacity to understand and facility to expound Wagner's music, and 
love for Wagner's art, fired him with an enthusiasm which illumines 
nearly every page." 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, 

a 9 W. 23d Street, (H, '04). NEW YORK. 



THIRTEENTH IMPRESSION of "A novel novel and an 
all-around good one." — Brooklyn Eagle. 



The Lightning 
Conductor. 

The Strange Adventures of a Motor Car. 

By C. N. and A. M. WILLIAMSON. 

Iimo, $1.50. 

€J[ The love story of a beautiful American and 
a gallant Englishman, who stoops to conquer. 
Two almost human automobiles, the one 
German, heavy and stubborn, and the other 
French, light and easy-going, play prominent 
parts. There is much humor. Picturesque 
scenes in Provence, Spain and Italy pass be- 
fore the reader's eyes in rapid succession. 

Nation : " Such delightful people, and such delightful scenes. . . . 
It should be a good, practical guide to those about to go over 
the same course, while its charming descriptions of travel afford 
an ample new fund of pleasure, tinged with envy here and there 
to the stay-at-homes." 

N. T. Sun: "A pleasant and felicitous romance." 

Springfield Republican : "Wholly new, and decidedly entertaining.** 

Brooklyn Eagle : "A novel novel and an all-around good one." 

Chicago Pott: "Sprightly humor . . . the story moves." 

Boston Transcript: "Can hardly fail of a popular vote of approval." 

HENRY HOLT & COMPANY, 

KI.1V YORK. (*,'oj). CHICAGO 



NOV 18 1904 






&m& 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



020 972 251 3 



